Combining Segregation and Integration: Schelling Model Dynamics for Heterogeneous Population
Authored by Itzhak Benenson, Erez Hatna
Date Published: 2015
Sponsors:
United States National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Platforms:
No platforms listed
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
The Schelling model is a simple agent-based model that demonstrates how
individuals' relocation decisions can generate residential segregation
in cities. Agents belong to one of two groups and occupy cells of
rectangular space. Agents react to the fraction of agents of their own
group within the neighborhood around their cell. Agents stay put when
this fraction is above a given tolerance threshold but seek a new
location if the fraction is below the threshold. The model is well-known
for its tipping point behavior: an initially random (integrated) pattern
remains integrated when the tolerance threshold is below 1/3 but becomes
segregated when the tolerance threshold is above 1/3. In this paper, we
demonstrate that the variety of the Schelling model's steady patterns is
richer than the segregation-integration dichotomy and contains patterns
that consist of segregated patches of each of the two groups, alongside
areas where both groups are spatially integrated. We obtain such
patterns by considering a general version of the model in which the
mechanisms of the agents' interactions remain the same, but the
tolerance threshold varies between the agents of both groups. We show
that the model produces patterns of mixed integration and segregation
when the tolerance threshold of an essential fraction of agents is
either low, below 1/5, or high, above 2/3. The emerging mixed patterns
are relatively insensitive to the model's other parameters.
Tags
residential segregation