Schelling's model of residential segregation

Many cities are highly segregated along racial and ethnic lines. An intriguingly simple explanation of this pattern was proposed by Thomas Schelling. His model has received a lot of attention because it shows that segregation can emerge even when individuals are willing to live in neighborhoods where their group is in the minority.

This animation movie shows typical dynamics that Schelling's model generates in a population of 2500 agents that consists of two groups (blue and orange). At the outset, the agents are randomly distributed on the lattice (torus). At each time step, one agent that is placed in a neighborhood where the share of similar neighbors is smaller than 30 percent is moved to a random unoccupied spot. Thus, agents accept to live in neighborhoods with up to 70 percent neighbors of the other group.


Reference
Schelling, Thomas C. 1978. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York: WW Norton and Company.