Ethnicity and wealth: The dynamics of dual segregation

Creating inclusive cities requires meaningful responses to inequality and segregation. We build an agent-based model of interactions between wealth and ethnicity of agents to investigate ‘dual’ segregations—due to ethnicity and due to wealth. As agents are initially allowed to move into neighbourhoods they cannot afford, we find a regime where there is marginal increase in both wealth segregation and ethnic segregation. However, as more agents are progressively allowed entry into unaffordable neighbourhoods, we find that both wealth and ethnic segregations undergo sharp, non-linear transformations, but in opposite directions—wealth segregation shows a dramatic decline, while ethnic segregation an equally sharp upsurge. We argue that the decrease in wealth segregation does not merely accompany, but actually drives the increase in ethnic segregation. Essentially, as agents are progressively allowed into neighbourhoods in contravention of affordability, they create wealth configurations that enable a sharp decline in wealth segregation, which at the same time allow co-ethnics to spatially congregate despite differences in wealth, resulting in the abrupt worsening of ethnic segregation.