Parable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of society

This is fantastic! We were just noticing how segregated our own neighborhood near Boston is, and wondering what drives that and what could be done about it. You can see the same thing all over the city -- neighborhoods that are much more white than average right next to neighborhoods that are much less white than average.

Really interesting that this could be self-generated with very little bias (setting aside that there's definitely still some intentional housing discrimination in Boston). And really interesting that it could potentially be reversed if people started to avoid neighborhoods that are highly segregated in their "favor."

I wonder if integration could be advertised as a benefit of certain properties on real estate sites like Zillow. What would happen if home listings had a "well integrated neighborhood" indicator for neighborhoods that have about the same racial balance as the larger area, the same way they have indicators for good schools and public transportation and so on? Would that be appealing to actual buyers the same way it's appealing to the Polygons in the model?

The risk is that an index like that could be used to encourage segregation instead -- but I'm hopeful that, on average, we're better than that at this point.

Here's one census map if you want to check out your neighborhood:

http://www.socialexplorer.com/

You can show racial data under "Change Data." We also found it helpful to change "Show data by: Tract" to "Block group" (more fine-grained), and to use quantile cutpoints under the color palette menu.

Anecdotally, I can say living near Boston I've heard plenty of families justify their choices to move to certain suburbs or neighborhoods on the basis that they prefer the diversity over a more homogenous subdivision. Of course, equally I've met people who live in a whitebread suburb and praise its diversity because of the number of Asian doctors' kids in the schoolsystem.

I think that suggests the flaw in this simulation - sure, segregation decreases overall if -everybody- is a little more tolerant of diversity. But how does it work out if some people prefer a diverse neighborhood, and some people don't? My guess: you get a new kind of segregation between homogenous neighborhoods, and diverse ones. Kinda like you do round Boston...