The Most Diverse Cities Are Often the Most Segregated | Hacker News Reader

The Most Diverse Cities Are Often the Most Segregated

fivethirtyeight.com

This doesn't surprise me. People tend to self-segregate. All else being equal, people will tend to live near other people of similar backgrounds.

Now let's say you're a purple person (fictional race chosen to avoid invoking any unintended implications) moving into a town that's 50% purple and 50% green. There are lots of places to live near other purple people. Some of those places will probably be places you like and can afford. So you'll naturally join your co-purpleists.

Now let's say you move to a different city that's 5% purple and 95% green. There's probably only a couple of places where you can live among other purples. Odds are pretty good that those places don't suit you. You'll be much more likely to choose to live among the greens.

Here is an agent based simulation that illustrates this concept:

http://nifty.stanford.edu/2014/mccown-schelling-model-segreg...

One interesting thing of note about the Schelling segregation model is that you still get segregation/clumping even when the threshold is relatively low:

>For the remainder of this explanation, let's assume a threshold t of 30%. This means every agent is fine with being in the minority as long as there are at least 30% of similar agents in adjacent cells.

In addition, when the threshold is too high, there's a large amount of churn that happens, due to constantly dissatisfied agents moving around and having "undesirable" agents coming in.

I wonder if there has been work on adjusting the Schelling segregation model to give different threshold/"tolerance" values to different types of agents.

I also wonder if there have been attempts at applying this model to real-world racial data. Given the several most recent recordings of census data for race, could there be an analysis that concludes, "the arrangement we have is, if assumed to be a Schelling segregation model, most likely to have arisen as a result of a tolerance threshold of X%"?

One thing I found fascinating is that, with a sizable majority (I set red to around 80%), the minority actually becomes less stable if you set a moderately low threshold for moving. With a high threshold (like t=67%) you get very rapid clumping as both reds and blues try to move into areas where they're in the majority. But with a low threshold (like t=25%) the few majority people who are isolated move, minorities quickly fill the open spots, and then the only remaining locations for minorities are completely surrounded by the majority (while no more majority members ever move). So the minorities just shuffle around between a bunch of unacceptable locations, none of which give them the 2 minority neighbors they require. Then there's a sudden transition when t gets low enough, at around 16% -- the minority will tolerate having only one similar neighbor as long as there's also an empty spot, and therefore they stabilize very quickly.

So when the threshold is high, there's a lot of churn early but then stabilization. When the threshold is low, the tolerant majority stops churning quickly and therefore stops opening up spots the minority finds desirable.

another interactive version of the Schelling model: http://ncase.me/polygons/

Instead of purples and greens, let's use whites and yellows. We can see in the real world, whether it's Europeans in Asia, or Asians in Europe, the foreigners would be lucky to make 5%, yet tend to live in the same neighbourhoods in whatever city. When you're that level of minority, clumping together gets you better services you can access - in languages you can speak fluently, from people who are familiar with your cultural background and needs.

Not sure why it claims maximum diversity is ideal. In NYC people often prefer to live in the neighborhood of their ethnicity where there will be many stores with what they like, in their language, and many speakers of their native language among other benefits.

There is an implicit assumption in many circles that maximizing diversity is optimal. This assumption is never really questioned, it just is. Diversity has it's benefits, as does congregating with like-minded people, ethnically and otherwise. If diversity was always the ideal, hiring for 'culture fit' wouldn't be such a big theme in startups right now.

I'm not sure why maximum integration is considered ideal either.

I do consider maximum integration ideal.

The more you segregate people, the easier it is to start wars and other violent conflict. Many Americans have no problem with bombing (or droning) Iraqis, for example. There would be more outrage if you droned black people in Baltimore. But even in Baltimore the segregation causes problems.

It's just human nature, to create in-groups and have special morality for them, and modern societies should fight it, by intermixing people. Democracy and social equality are good instruments to do so. Ideally on planetary scale, but were not there yet.

It can also be seen as a tradeoff. With segregation, you get a more closely knit community in the inside, but less to the outside. Conflicts occur in both scenarios, but there are different ways to dissipate it. Interacting with people you don't know that well dissipates the conflict often and by very little, which may be frustrating and lead to less happiness. Closer-knit community may dissipate conflict to the outside at once, with violent results. So it's really choose your poison situation - be perpetually unhappy in individualism or be happier now but risk a larger war from time to time.

Tribalism is like junk food.

It feels sweet in the short term, so we tend to cling natrually to it, but in vast amounts, in the long run, it's been showed to cause many problems.

/euphemism

Robert Putnam's research has also shown some of the complications that come with diversity:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007....

He does not support the conservative interpretation of his work that "diversity is bad":

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/robert-putnam-says-his...

I don't think conservatives believe diversity is "bad", just that it's not worth stacking the deck in otherwise merit-based processes to produce.

> otherwise merit-based processes

What a delightful thought experiment! In the meantime...

I've seen plenty who think diversity is outright bad. There are plenty more who think as you say, of course.

The great thing about academic research is that the author isn't the sole judge of what is a valid interpretation of his work. In this case, Putman asserts, for reasons other than his research, that diversity is still a good thing. But taken on its own, his research certainly is evidence that diversity is bad.

> But taken on its own, his research certainly is evidence that diversity is bad.

To be more precise, it says "diversity has drawbacks."

An important distinction, because when side A says "diversity is good" and side B says "diversity has drawbacks," then side A can come back and say, "well here are the benefits." Then you can compare the benefits and drawbacks and see if that helps you arrive at a better decision.

If side A says "diversity is good" and side B says "diversity is bad," then you have an intractable conflict.

Or worse, what often happens is that side A says "diversity is good," side B says "diversity has drawbacks" then side A says "side B says diversity is bad, they are evil you should not ever listen to side B under any circumstances."

> He does not support the conservative interpretation of his work that "diversity is bad":

This is a bit of a semantic leap. Putnam objected to the use of his brief to support a lawsuit against race-conscious admissions. The article describes this brief as representing Putnam's work without the "diversity isn't always bad" disclaimer. That's a far cry from using it in a simplistic argument to say diversity is bad.

The question on the table is about race-conscious admissions. If one side's position is that using race-conscious admissions is good because it improves diversity and diversity is good, period, then challenging that premise is a perfectly valid use of Putnam's research, however Putnam might personally feel about matter.

In the article, Putnam himself is quoted as saying:

In the short term, he writes, there are clearly challenges, but over the long haul, he argues that diversity has a range of benefits for a society, and that the fragmentation and distrust can be overcome.

Great! But how the hell are you ever actually going find solutions to those challenges if you aren't allowed to bring up points like this in any situation where it might actually make a difference? And what are those benefits, exactly?

> And what are those benefits, exactly?

The fundamental offering that diversity brings to a society is plurality of opinion. This presents us with a mildly interesting paradox: a segregated society has no use for plural opinion, but a highly integrated society flat-out lacks them: diversity is the middle ground at which plural opinion is available.

As an aside, mainstream "controversy" is a segregated-society phenomenon, not a diverse-society one. You can tell the three kinds by their reaction to a reasonable alternative: a segregated society reacts with hostility or contempt; a diverse society reacts with toleration or moderation; an integrated society reacts with confusion or ignorance.

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