Abstract
We analyze urban spatial segregation phenomenon in terms of the income
distribution over a population, and an inflationary parameter weighting
the evolution of housing prices. For this, we develop a discrete
spatially extended model based on a multiagent approach. In our model,
the mobility of socioeconomic agents is driven only by the housing prices.
Agents exchange location in order to fit their status to the cost of their
housing. On the other hand, the price of a particular house depends on the
status of its tenant, and on the neighborhood mean lodging cost weighted by
a control parameter. The agent's dynamics converges to a spatially
organized configuration, whose regularity is measured by using an
entropy-like indicator. This simple model provides a dynamical process
organizing the virtual city, in a way that the population inequality
and the inflationary parameter determine the degree of residential
segregation in the final stage of the process, in agreement with the
segregation-inequality thesis put forward by Douglas Massey.