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357 points pyduan | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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JackC ◴[] No.8719460[source]
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.

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1. vog ◴[] No.8721549[source]
> You can show racial data ...

It is interesting that you applied the squares/triangles model to racism.

For me, given the 50%/50% rate of squares/triangles, I was thinking more about men/women and the places being workplaces rather than living places. (or teams within a workplace, or girls/boys within sports or school activities)

I see this as an indicator that the "parable of the polygons" is applicable to many aspects of society.

replies(1): >>8722284 #
2. xianshou ◴[] No.8722284[source]
Good point, although this particular metaphor is originally derived from racial segregation - the authors cite a landmark study on racial segregation in US cities as their motivation for the site.
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3. catwell ◴[] No.8728031[source]
The sandbox at the end has a slider to change the ratio so you can tune it to simulate race instead of gender (although having more than two shapes would be nice, and also other dimensions than shapes to observe intersectional interactions).

[edit] ... and someone did add a shape: http://dncnmcdougall.github.io/polygons/