  We study the galaxy environment of active galaxies, radio-loud and
radio-quiet quasars in the redshift range $0.1\leq z\leq0.25$. We use APM
galaxies in order to explore the local galaxy overdensity and the $b_J-R$
colour distribution of neighbouring galaxies of these target samples. For
comparison, we perform similar analysis on samples of Abell clusters with X-ray
emission, and samples of Abell clusters with richness R=1 and R=0. The
projected cross-correlations show that the samples of quasars and active
galaxies reside in regions of galaxy density enhancements lower than those
typical of R=0 clusters. We also find that in the nearby universe the local
galaxy overdensity of radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars are comparable. The
analysis of the distribution of $b_J-R$ galaxy colour indexes suggests that the
environment of quasars is not strongly dominated by a population of red
galaxies, characteristic of rich Abell cluster, an effect that is more clearly
appreciated for our sample of radio-loud quasars.
