Schelling's Segregation Model: Parameters, Scaling, and Aggregation

Abstract: Thomas Schelling proposed an influential simple spatial model to illustrate how, even with relatively mild assumptions on each individual's nearest neighbor preferences, an integrated city would likely unravel to a segregated city, even if all individuals prefer integration. Aggregation relates to individuals coming together to form groups and global aggregation corresponds to segregation. Many authors assumed that the segregation which Schelling observed in simulations on very small cities persists for larger, realistic size cities. We devise new measures to quantify the segregation and unlock its dependence on city size, disparate neighbor comfortability threshold, and population density. We identify distinct scales of global aggregation, and show that the striking global aggregation Schelling observed is strictly a small city phenomenon. We also discover several scaling laws for the aggregation measures.