Big cities foster socioeconomic segregation

Using cellphone data, a collaboration of researchers led by Stanford University determined that most people in big cities have very few opportunities for even brief interactions with those outside their own socioeconomic status. The results, published Nov. 29 in Nature, show that if we want cities to be the cosmopolitan mixing grounds we expect them to be, we need to make intentional urban design choices to encourage those interactions.  “As we become an ever more urban country, it’s important to figure out whether big cities are living up to the long-standing assumption that they promote mixing and diversity,” said David Grusky, the Edward Ames Edmonds Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. “Although income inequality remains extremely high, that doesn’t mean that we also have to reconcile ourselves to highly segregated cities in which people who are rich never see or interact with those who are poor.”