On the complexity of assimilation in urban communities

Renita Murimi

doi:10.1007/s41109-021-00399-y

Abstract

Cities are microcosms representing a diversity of human experience. The complexity of urban systems arises from this diversity, where the services that cities offer to their inhabitants have to be tailored for their unique requirements. This paper studies the complexity of urban environments in terms of the assimilation of its communities. We examine the urban assimilation complexity with respect to the foreignness between communities and formalize the level of complexity using information-theoretic measures. Our findings contribute to a sociological perspective of the relationship between urban complex systems and the diversity of communities that make up urban systems.

Highlights

Cities have long represented the hopes and aspirations of people
The limitations of our study include the following: 1. Macro factors: The work in this paper examined the complexity of assimilation in urban communities with respect to the education, income and language—all of which have been coded as mutually independent variables that take on discrete values in a limited range
We addressed urban complex systems in terms of the widespread phenomenon of assimilation that is prevalent in urban communities

Summary

Introduction

Cities have long represented the hopes and aspirations of people. Migration in the middle ages and later, during the industrial revolution picked up pace as more and more people flocked to urban areas in search of new modes of employment (Williamson 2002). Cities are faced with a constant influx of people arriving from various geographical and cultural backgrounds, with varying levels of affinities and similarities to the native and existing populations. New York City is home to little more than 8 million people concentrated in a space of roughly three hundred square miles. The city widely varies with regards to the distribution of income, education, ethnicities and language proficiencies of its people (Karpati et al 2004; Shmool et al 2014).

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Conclusion