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Significant suppression of segregation in Schelling’s metapopulation model with star-type underlying topology

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Abstract

Segregation phase transition has long been considered a robust phenomenon in celebrated Schelling’s segregation model, the degree of segregation remains largely unchanged even with different underlying topologies. However, in this study, we have observed that a significant suppression of segregation can be achieved by modifying agents’ migration paths in a Schelling’s metapopulation model with a simple step utility function, based on an extremely heterogeneous star-type underlying complex network. We find that the degree of suppression is occupancy density dependent, and the effect is even more pronounced at higher occupancy densities. To explore the impact of this modification of migration paths, we suggest a random adding-link mechanism as well. We have observed that as the adding-link probability increases from zero to unity, the significantly suppressed segregation phase at lower probability eventually emerges. Moreover, we identified a scaling law of the average stationary interface density versus the re-scaled adding-link probability.

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Data and source code associated in the manuscript are available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China via Grant No. 11505115.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, People’s Republic of China

    Guifeng Su & Yi Zhang

Authors
  1. Guifeng Su
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  2. Yi Zhang
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All the authors contributed equally to the analytical and numerical calculations contained in the present manuscript.

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Correspondence to Guifeng Su or Yi Zhang.

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Su, G., Zhang, Y. Significant suppression of segregation in Schelling’s metapopulation model with star-type underlying topology. Eur. Phys. J. B 96, 91 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/s10051-023-00560-9

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