Home▸Society & Economics▸Schelling's Model: Small Preferences, Big Segregation

🏘️ Schelling's Model: Small Preferences, Big Segregation

Interactive 3D grid of two agent types where adjusting each agent's tolerance threshold shows mild individual preferences producing large-scale residential segregation patterns over time.

Society & Economics3DEasy60 FPS

A 3D city grid of two agent types self-sorts as each agent checks its immediate neighbors and relocates when its own-type share drops below a shared tolerance threshold, turning a mild individual preference into stark large-scale segregation.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Even a tolerance as low as 30-40% same-type neighbors — a genuine minority preference, not intolerance — is enough for the local relocation rule to produce large, sharply bounded single-type blocks across the whole grid.

🎮 How to Use

Adjust tolerance, grid size, and vacancy rate, then watch unhappy agents (highlighted lighter) relocate each step. Reshuffle the city to restart from a fresh random distribution and compare how quickly segregation emerges.

💡 Did You Know?

Thomas Schelling built this model by hand with coins on graph paper in 1971; it remains one of the most cited demonstrations that group-level outcomes can diverge sharply from any individual's actual intentions.

⚙ Under the hood

Interactive 3D grid of two agent types where adjusting each agent's tolerance threshold shows mild individual preferences producing large-scale residential segregation patterns over time.

schelling-modelsegregationagent-based-modelingemergent-behaviorurban-dynamicssociety

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install