Schelling Segregation — Emergent Separation from Mild Preferences
Two groups (orange and blue) share a grid. An agent is "unhappy" if fewer than T% of neighbors are like them. Unhappy agents move to random empty cells. Even with low T (e.g. 30%), strong spatial segregation emerges — Schelling's 1971 result.
Parameters
Statistics
Happy agents —
Unhappy agents —
Segregation index —
Moves made —
Steps —
Schelling (1971): even at T=33%, agents will never be in minority among neighbors. Yet the emergent pattern is nearly complete segregation — a micro-macro paradox.
Segregation index: fraction of same-type neighbors averaged over all agents.