Sociospatial Residential Dynamics: Stability and Instability within a Self‐Organizing City

Conceiving the city as a self‐organizing system we highlight and examine the phenomena of residential sociospatial segregation in a city and the existence and role of local regions of instability within an otherwise stable urban system. It is argued that the emergence of local pockets of sociospatial instability is governed (among other things) by a self‐organization principle we term the captivity principle. The latter is essential to the systemic stability and reproduction of the city as a whole. The discussion is elaborated by reference to empirical evidence and by means of “city games” played on City, a cellular automata simulation model we have specifically designed for this purpose. 1994 The Ohio State University