An Analysis of One-Dimensional Schelling Segregation
Computer Science and Game Theory
2012-03-30 v2
Abstract
We analyze the Schelling model of segregation in which a society of n individuals live in a ring. Each individual is one of two races and is only satisfied with his location so long as at least half his 2w nearest neighbors are of the same race as him. In the dynamics, randomly-chosen unhappy individuals successively swap locations. We consider the average size of monochromatic neighborhoods in the final stable state. Our analysis is the first rigorous analysis of the Schelling dynamics. We note that, in contrast to prior approximate analyses, the final state is nearly integrated: the average size of monochromatic neighborhoods is independent of n and polynomial in w.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1203.6346,
title = {An Analysis of One-Dimensional Schelling Segregation},
author = {Christina Brandt and Nicole Immorlica and Gautam Kamath and Robert Kleinberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1203.6346},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
24 pages, to appear in STOC 2012