IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v683y2026ics0378437125008635.html

Bridging the divide: Economic exchange and segregation in dual-income cities

Author

Listed:
  • Ortega, Diego
  • Korutcheva, Elka

Abstract

Segregation is a growing concern around the world. One of its main manifestations is the creation of ghettos, whose inhabitants have difficult access to well-paid jobs, which are often located far from their homes. In order to study this phenomenon, we propose an extension of Schelling’s model of segregation to take into account the existence of economic exchanges. To approximate a geographical model of the city, we consider a small-world network with a defined real estate market. The evolution of the system has also been studied, finding that economic exchanges follow exponential laws and relocations are approximated by power laws. Besides, the size of the economic exchange plays a crucial role in overall segregation. Despite its simplicity, we find that our model reproduces situations such as the separation between favored and handicapped economic areas, the importance of economic contacts between them to improve the distribution of wealth, and the existence of efficient and cheap transport to break the poverty cycles typical of disadvantaged zones.

Suggested Citation

  • Ortega, Diego & Korutcheva, Elka, 2026. "Bridging the divide: Economic exchange and segregation in dual-income cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 683(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:683:y:2026:i:c:s0378437125008635
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2025.131211
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437125008635
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2025.131211?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:683:y:2026:i:c:s0378437125008635. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.