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| ``Don't buy the house, buy the neighborhood'' (Russian proverb).
This talk is concerned with issues related to urban social segregation. Going beyond the simplest models introduced by T. C. Schelling in the 70's, we introduce a model of housing transactions between agents heterogeneous in their income, hence in their willingness to pay. The goal is to see how the spatial income segregation depends on both economic constraints and social interactions. A key feature of the model is that agents preferences for a place are expressed in terms of a local attractiveness, which depends on both an intrinsic attractiveness of the location and the social characteristics of its neighborhood. The demand for an asset thus depends on its attractiveness, which in turn evolves according to the social characteristics of the newcomers.
The resulting stationary space distribution of income is analytically characterized and illustrated by agent-based simulations. The main results are that, (1), socio-spatial segregation occurs if, and only if, the social influence is strong enough, and, (2), even so, some social diversity is preserved at most locations. Comparing with the Parisian housing market, the results reproduce general trends concerning the price distribution and the income spatial segregation. |
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