A Spatially Extended Model for Residential Segregation

We analyze urban spatial segregation phenomenon in terms of the income distribution over a population, and an inflationary parameter weighting the evolution of housing prices. For this, we develop a discrete spatially extended model based on a multiagent approach. In our m...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Antonio Aguilera, Edgardo Ugalde
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2007-01-01
Series:Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2007/48589
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Summary:We analyze urban spatial segregation phenomenon in terms of the income distribution over a population, and an inflationary parameter weighting the evolution of housing prices. For this, we develop a discrete spatially extended model based on a multiagent approach. In our model, the mobility of socioeconomic agents is driven only by the housing prices. Agents exchange location in order to fit their status to the cost of their housing. On the other hand, the price of a particular house depends on the status of its tenant, and on the neighborhood mean lodging cost weighted by a control parameter. The agent's dynamics converges to a spatially organized configuration, whose regularity is measured by using an entropy-like indicator. This simple model provides a dynamical process organizing the virtual city, in a way that the population inequality and the inflationary parameter determine the degree of residential segregation in the final stage of the process, in agreement with the segregation-inequality thesis put forward by Douglas Massey.
ISSN:1026-0226
1607-887X