Subject of this thesis are the modernization processes in the city of Split, in the context of environmental attitudes and the perception of urban environment in those processes. The thesis is based on the hybrid approach stemming from the environmental sociology and the modernization theories. Furthermore, it is based on the basic assumption of the modern environmental sociology, that society and the environment should be researched interactively, taking into account the links among both levels. The research was partly based on such approach, as its goal was to describe the links between sociocultural determinants of the environmental attitudes and the urban environmental quality. Such research does not fulfill the strict Durkheim's proposal on the explanations of the social facts using (exclusively) other social facts. It is in line, however, with the extended research paradigm of the environmental sociology which aims to make explicit the interrelations between the social and the environmental aspects. The second part of the conceptualization deals with the theoretical approaches which place the ecological orientations into the wider matrix of the social relations. In this tradition, we find three especially prominent approaches: risk society theory, reflexive modernization theory and Ronald Inglehart’s version of modernization theory. Many studies analyzing the interrelations between wealth, postmaterialist values and environmental attitudes were based upon these approaches; they were however based either on the macro level of nation states or the micro level of individuals. In the last ten years, conceptual and methodological advances have been made in the environmental attitudes research. In accordance with the appropriate research designs, data has been collected at the individual level, but they are analyzed simultaneously both on the individual and the aggregated level. This has led to the richer conclusions than have been possible in the studies which dealt with the data analyzed separately on the micro and the macro level. The research design described in the following thesis has been motivated by the need to study entities beyond micro and macro levels. Thus, meso level unit in the form of a middle-sized city of Split was chosen. Urban environmental quality was identified as an important factor in the day-to-day lives of the citizens of Split. It is expected that the environmental quality will have a moderating effect in the link between the sociocultural factors and environmental attitudes. Research goal was thus to measure appropriately urban environmental quality and then determine the extent of the interaction between the environmental attitudes, postmaterialism and environmental quality on the 3 levels: individual-, neighborhood- and city-level. Research results, based on the sample of citizens of Split, indicate that there is no empirical support for the hypothesis of sociocultural factors being the most important predictor of environmental attitudes in the developed societies. Variations in environmental orientations are better explained using the globalization hypothesis. In other words, those variations are more closely linked with sociodemographic variables and some particular modernization elements such as political participation, than with a broad postmaterialism concept. The association between the environmental attitudes and the modernization tendencies in Split is moderated by the environmental quality, which was analyzed at the city-zones level. Study results show that there are markedly different patterns of association among the environmental quality perception and the environmental attitudes. The association is negative in some parts of the city, while it is positive in others, implying that differences in environmental quality fundamentally change the structure of environmental attitudes. Scientific contribution of the study is twofold. First, the structure of environmental attitudes is described in detail. Second, the associations in the city of Split among the environmental attitudes, (post)modernization values, sociodemographic variables and additional factors like political participation are disentangled. The main finding - that the perception of environmental quality affects environmental attitudes differently in various city zones - could not be established using only traditional (micro and macro) levels of analysis and without data gathered at the level of the urban settlement.