Small preferences. Changing neighbourhoods.
Schelling explored how individual rules can generate aggregate patterns. Even a preference that does not demand complete separation can produce clustering through repeated moves.
Inside this model
A bounded 16 × 16 grid begins with equal groups and 20% vacancies. An agent is unhappy if the share of like neighbours among occupied adjacent cells is below its threshold. In shuffled order, unhappy agents move to a random vacancy; new sites need not immediately satisfy them.
Out in the world
A practical use
Use the model to distinguish individual intentions from collective outcomes in neighbourhood or organisational clustering.
A useful lens. Not a universal law.
- This toy model omits discrimination, wealth, housing supply, policy and history. It cannot explain real segregation on its own. Agents with no occupied neighbours are treated as satisfied.
Associated thinkers
Further reading
Explore the original research or the teaching reference behind this experiment.
Nobel committee — Schelling, micromotives and macrobehavior ↗