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Generative models of urban form

simulations

It goes without saying that most of our lives are spent in buildings. Less obvious are the implications of this obvious fact.

Consider a two-dimensional map. It presents a smooth surface, but the reality it represents is warped. Certain points on it support more interaction than others: the ones with buildings on them. Being near such a point puts you in close contact with more people than elsewhere. Depending on the social rules governing who is supposed to be there and what they are supposed to do, the building may increase or decrease your chances of coming into contact with people similar to or different from yourself.

They are not just physical structures, they are venues for social life, and the social order of cities grow up around them. If they change — their number and distribution, their rules of social inclusion or exclusion, the types of activity they afford — the city changes as well. This combination of forms, groups, and activities is the anchor of our model of urban evolution. 

In a new paper (with Ultan Byrne and Patrick Adler), we show via computer simulations the power of venues to affect the broader urban order by shaping the interactions of individuals. We do so by building upon the classic work of Thomas Schelling/ In 1971, Schelling proposed what became known as the “Schelling model of segregation,” which expressed in an especially clear way the type of thinking for which he eventually received the Nobel prize: local, small-scale interactions generate larger aggregate structures, often in surprising ways.

The “Schelling model of segregation” shows this vividly. Imagine a checkerboard with red and blue pieces that represent individuals. Let’s say each individual has a desire to be around people of their own group. Let’s make it relatively small: a red individual wants at least 25-30% of the others around them to be red, otherwise the’ll move to a different location where this condition is met, if they can.

Schelling showed that, starting from a random distribution of reds and blues, if you repeat this process over and over again you’ll end up with basically total segregation of red and blue. The map that results looks eerily like real cities.

The irony is that, within the Schelling model, no individual agent wants this outcome. The social structure is not necessarily a direct result of individual intentions. Moreover, once that pattern of segregation sets in, outside of a radical transformation of human psychology, little can be done to alter it (within this model).

This is a model and like any model it makes many simplifying assumptions. In our paper, we think through the implications of something maybe so simple that prior studies of this model have largely overlooked: there are no buildings in it, it does not capture the warped space we live in.

So we built a model that extends Schelling’s to include buildings in the simplest way we could think of. Basically, you need four things: 1. a travel radius (how far your reds and blues will go to visit the venue); 2. exclusivity (is the venue exclusive to one group, like an exclusive golf club, or is it open to members of any group); 3. obligatoriness (are individuals obliged to attend it, like an orthodox synagogue, or is it more optional, like a cafe); 4. physical features (how many venues are there, and where are they located).

With those simple features, you can account for, and observe the logical implications for urban segregation and integration, of one of the most pervasive facts of our experience, which is that we congregate in buildings. This happens because the people you interact with in buildings alter the Schelling-style calculation as to whether an individual feels “comfortable” in their location. One might be a majority in terms of the people who live nearby or who you pass by on the street, but a minority when you include those you meet in the venues. Or vice versa: you might be a minority in terms of who lives there, but interact with many people of your group in the local venues (who traveled there from elsewhere) or travel elsewhere to interact with members of your group.

By repeating and varying those simple processes you can think through their implications. One is that they generate a distinctively urban order: Schelling’s model yields clumps whose physical location has no meaning or basis. With buildings in the model, you can generate an East vs. West side (“opposite sides of the tracks”) or a centre-periphery structure with a more diverse core and more homogenous peripheries.

You can also observe how, depending on the characteristics and location of the building, it is possible to forestall the deep segregation characteristic of the Schelling model from arising, without requiring any radical transformation of individuals’ psychology. You can also unsettle deeply sedimented patterns of segregation through the right combination of venue parameters, whereas they are basically set in stone in Schelling’s highly individualistic model (via a genetic algorithm, not shown in this paper but coming to a blog post soon)

And you can find ironies and reversals like the sort Schelling exposed. Just as Schelling demonstrated that one cannot simply read individual intentions from collective patterns of behavior, one cannot simply read organizational values from their surrounding patterns of segregation. Relatively exclusive venues can generate diverse neighborhoods (by providing a local foothold for minority groups to sustain their distinctive cultures), while relatively inclusive venues can in some circumstances produce highly segregated areas (by drawing in tolerant and “adventurous” persons who, despite their individual understanding, change the overall makeup of the area).

An advantage of the computer simulation approach is that you can pinpoint the precise mechanisms by which these outcomes occur. Some of these include “evacuation,” “cooptation,” “bootstrapping,” “cascading,” and “bridging.” 

The paper also includes videos showing the simulation runs unfold. 

The abstract is below. The paper is freely available here.

Abstract: This paper examines an important but underappreciated mechanism affecting urban segregation and integration: urban venues. The venue- an area where urbanites interact- is an essential aspect of city life that tends to influence residential location. We study the venue/segregation relationship by overlaying venues onto Schelling’s classic (1971) agent-based segregation model. We show that a simulation world with venues makes segregation less likely among relatively tolerant agents and more likely among the intolerant. We also show that multiple venues can create spatial structures beyond their catchment areas and that the initial location of venues shapes later residential patterns. Finally, we demonstrate that the social rules governing venue participation alter their impacts on segregation. In the course of our study, we compile techniques for advancing Schelling-style studies of urban environments and catalogue a set of mechanisms that operate in this environment.