NetLogo User Community Models

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## WHAT IS IT?

This model replicates the dynamics of the Segregation Model by the Nobel Prize for Economics Thomas Schelling: he was the first to analyze, within mathematical frameworks, social activies such as the becoming of neighborhoods within cities. The NetLogo model tries to capture the theory of social dynamics by estending it to N <= 10 social groups, which is, to amplify its original scale in order to make it closer to actual, real-life dynamics.

## HOW IT WORKS

Each agent is described by a patch which is characterized by a distinct colour which refers to its social group. The black patches, instead, to empty houses in which the agents may transfer if they are dissatisfied with their neighborhood. Each agent will remain in its original spot as long as its eight surrounding patches contain more agents of the same social group (of the same color) than agents of the other ones. If the opposite occurs, then the agent will move to an empty location, therefore influencing the social composition of the neighborhood in which it arrives. After many iteration, the society will start to appear more and more concentrated in areas with only members of the same groups: an equilibrium may appear when no agent wants to move since it is already in a satisfying neighborhood composed mainly of its peers, however such status will manifest only after society loses its initial spacial heterogeneity and becomes clustered. This is the ending result of Schelling's Model: a Macro behaviour (segregation) appears from the interactions of Micro preferences (the will to live near to people of the same group).

## HOW TO USE IT

The usage of the model is very simple: set the slider to a given number of social groups and press Setup: the initial heterogenous society will appear. By pressing Go, the agent will start to move in order to improve their location and this loop will continue indefinitely.

## THINGS TO NOTICE

If a large number (n > 6) of social groups is selected, them the model will take more time to reach a segregation equilibrium. In particular, at first the patter will appear to be completely random, but, as the number of ticks increases, clusters will begin to appear, thus igniting the reaction which drives society towards a segregation outcome.

## THINGS TO TRY

Try to set the number of social groups to 9 and to wait for the becoming of the clustered neighbrhood.

## RELATED MODELS
This model is an extension, for social groups >= 2, of the segregation model which can be found in the NetLogo Library.

## CREDITS AND REFERENCES

Micromotives and Macrobehaviour, Thomas Schelling, 1978