Carolina
This study examined the differences in the attitudes of black and white students towards Soul City, a new town currently under construction in Warren County, North Carolina. 115 white students and 45 black students attending a redominantly white university and 122 black students attending a predominantly bLck university responded to a survey instrument develo ed to measure attitudes towards the new town. Scores on the instrument were Pactor analyzed and while no significant differences were found between the two black student grou s, blacks and whites, over all, differed on three of the four factorial dimensions ilentified: Social Idealism, Social Trust, and Human Welfare. These findin s are discussed in terms of the larger community psychology significance of Sou? City.
Soul City is a planned, free standing, new community currently under development in Warren County, North Carolina. Like other planned communities, such as Columbia, Maryland, and Reston, Virginia, the Soul City Development was initiated in direct response to the sprawling, seemingly irreversible decay of the nation's large urban cities. As suggested by Burby and Weiss (1976), the decay of the urban environment has adversely affected the quality of life for tens of thousands of poor nonwhites trapped within its core and for even larger numbers of whites living under self-imposed exile in the suburbs.
Soul City, however, is distinctive among the more than sixty new communities and large-scale developments listed by the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. First, of the 14 new town projects that have received federal loan guarantees, it is the only free standing new community to be built. The others are either "new towns in town" or satellite towns to be built near large cities with an already existing job base and demand for new housing. Because of its free standing nature and its locationa rural, economically depressed area in North Carolina -Soul City has to develop its own economic base, i.e., attract new industry and people to the area (History of a New Community, 1975).
Secondly, its chief developer, Floyd B. McKissick is black, and, in fact, is the only black person among the 14 new town developers that have received federal loan guarantees. McKissick is the former head of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the leading civil rights organizations during the 1960s. Noting the frustrations of many Southern black, ex-farm workers who migrated North decades ago as agricultural employment in the South declined, McKissick described the goal of Soul City in these idyllic terms:
. . , to improve the quality of life for residents of the rural and depressed North Carolina and Virginia counties which make up its environs, to offer a life of opportunity and fulfillment to those who wish to return to rural North Carolina from an equally deprived if different existence in the cities, and to provide a chance to all to bring their skills, participate in building and enjoy the fruits of an urban center in a