A social cohesion predict model based on Netlogo - based on the case of De Temple

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1 A social cohesion predict model based on Netlogo - based on the case of De Temple Xuechen Liu Feng Ye Eindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands x.liu.2@student.tue.nl Eindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands f.ye@student.tue.nl ABSTRACT Based on researches focusing on the relationship between interactions among community residents and social cohesion (Forrest & Kearns, 2001), taking the community De Temple in northern Eindhoven as an example.we built a predictive model on NETLOGO. And groups of controlled experiments were ran on this model, to evaluate the influence of neighborhood interaction device towards the cohesion within the community. KEYWORDS:NETLOGO;Stimmulation;Social cohesion; INTRODUCTION The community De Tempel in Eindhoven is changing. In the past, people with the same background came to live here, all young families from the working class. They all had similar expectations of the neighbourhood. However, recently, new people are moving in and bigger gaps between the citizens are developing: there are big differences in age, cultural background and vision on what a good neighborhood should be like. These changes are feared by some people. With concept of Ambihood, we want to offer people a way to decrease their fear for change. Ambihood is a design to encourage people to interact with their neigherings, in order to strengthen the weak tie between residents(forrest & Kearns, 2001). To evaluate it s influence towards social cohesion, and how and where should it be installed, we used NETLOGO as a tool,with the method of computer simulations to copy the way which the development of social cohesion happened in De Tempel, and tried to find possible influences of Ambihood. ANALYSIS The development of De Tempel can be regarded as a kind of complex adaptive systems. According to the definition in Serena Chan s research(s. Chan, 2001), firstly, the community is influenced by the changing environment, new immigrants move in continuingly, and immigrants will have influence on the community in many aspects, such as the density of residents, the layout of residents distribution, the development of amount of residents and relationship between residents, etc. And community insides will make adjustments to the changing environment (for example, when the community become older, the gap between the local people and the immigrants will become wider, and the influence from the immigrants will increase.) Secondly, residents insides have interactions because of many factors (cultural background, personality, education, etc.), this relationship is nonlinear. We can not predict a overall behavior as the sum of individual parts. And because of the disorder of

2 residents behaviors, the community has the potentials to deal with emergencies. Thirdly, the initial conditions such as the layout of buildings, the consistent of the early residents, etc. can have huge influences on the future development of the community. In a word, we think the development of this community has the attributes distributed control, connectivity, coevoluation, sensitive dependence on initial conditions, emergent order, far from equilibrium and state of paradox (S. Chan, 2001;Eve Mitleton-Kelly, 1997). It is reasonable to definite it as a CAS model. DESIGN Before the stimulation, the study was to learn how to build a social cohesion model based on realistic condition of De Tempel community. According to Ray Forrest and Ade Kearns s research(forrest & Kearns, 2001), we divide residents into two kinds, the local people and the immigrants. For local people, they have an attribute named tolerance, which includes factors such as cultural acceptance, safety, social identity, etc. that influence their attitudes to newcomers (Jenks, 2004;Fukuyama & Sevig, 1999). Different people have different characteristics, for example, order residents commonly feel important to cultivate the relationships with neighbors because of their past experience (Kontra, Phillipson, Skutnabb-Kangas & Várady, 1999), which should be reflected in the stimulation. So we differed people with different level of tolerance in different color on NETLOGO. Tolerance:(0,0.33) low tolerance local, color: red Tolerance:(0.33,0.66) middle tolerance local, color: yellow Tolerance:(0.66,1) high tolerance local, color: green We assumed that the amount of residents with different tolerance are equal at the beginning. Because most of local people have lived in the community for dozens of years, we assume they have strong social ties with their surrounding neighbours, which means their attitude would be influenced by their neighbors. A high tolerance people (green color) would create positive effects to the tolerance-value of their neighbours, while low tolerance people would create negative effects. For locals living around high/low tolerance local, their tolerance toward newcomers would increase/decrease gradually. Count the amount of residents with different tolerance can be regarded as a measurement of the social cohesion condition, the higher the ratio of high tolerance lacals, the better the social coherence. And the immigrants will enlarge the attitude of local people besides them, for example, if a local person has high tolerance to the immigrants, when he has several immigrant neighbors, this feeling will be increased. According to our investigation in De Temple, the local people there are seldom moved away, but the newcomers might move in/out because of many reasons. So we set local people s home can not move in the stimulations, and for every tick, there are newcomers move in/out randomly. Two global variables are delimited, initial local density and community age. Initial local density can lead to different distributions of the immigrants, when the initial original density is low, there are more space for immigrants to move in which means local people will have more chance to contact with immigrants. And the community age can be explained that when a community is older, the local people insides are more traditional and the gap between them and immigrants is wider, so the influence from immigrants should be bigger. We regard Ambihood as a kind of public installation which can increase resident s tolerance. And in the NETLOGO program, we definite it as a turtle which can be used to draw different patterns in public area. In the

3 stimulation, firstly, we want to test if Ambihood can change the social cohesion condition compared to a stimulation without Ambihood. Secondly, we will compare the results of Ambihood putted in different patters and locations in the public to find a suitable installation method.(figure 1 ) Figur 1. Relationships between different agents in the NETLOGO model. One Immigrant can be regarded as a coefficient which can enlarge the influence of local people, and this coefficient can be accumulated. Test1: stimulation of social cohesion development without Ambihood. Local people(turtles) are produced randomly on the map, and they are all static and influence its neighbors. Immigrants will move in (hatch in NETLOGO) in a certain rate, and some of them will move in (die in NETLOGO) in a certain rate. Number of Immigrants around one local person will be counted, and an accumulated coefficient will be added and the influence to neighbors of this local person will multiply this coefficient. When the space of the whole community(map) is closer to a certain amount, residents will not increase( amount of move in and move out become balanced). This process is considered as a natural development of a community in realistic. Test2: stimulation of social cohesion development with Installation of Ambihood in public. Local people(turtles) are produced randomly on the map, and they are not only interactive influenced, but also influenced by the Ambihood. When an Amhibood is putter besides a resident, its tolerance will increase. Different patterns of Ambihood are tested during the stimulation, and the design of pattern is based on the real condition of De Tempel community(figure 2 ).

4 Figure 2. A digital map of De Tempel. Results We did dozens of stimulations following Test 1 s rules, and the outcomes have some shared features: 1. Without Amhibood, local people s attitude towards newcomers are only affected by their old neighbors (with strong social tie). After newcomers started to move into the community, different people s attitude would start to aggregate into a certain area, with the middle-tolerance attitude being almost eliminated quickly. Which means residents in a certain district would share a same attitude (either open minded or not welcome) towards newcomers. a b Figure 3.Results of stimulation without Amhibood. a. random set local residents before simulation. b. The relatively stable state. 2. After different attitude area have formed, there would be a relatively stable state for the community s attitude towards newcomers, there are only some local locating at the meeting point of two areas would change their attitude long with the move in/ out of the newcomers.

5 a b Figure 4. a.number change of three kinds of local residents with simulation going. b. The change of the percentage of high tolerance local residents with simulation going 3. Altering the initial local density, which results in the ratio of local people. The aggregation district distribution would change accordingly. When the local density is relatively low, their would be more attitude aggregation areas, and the distribution would be more diffused and disconnected. When the local density is high, the area distribution would be more continues and the community s attitude is tend to be same, one attitude is likely to dominate the whole community.. Figure5. similation resualt with low local people density

6 Figure 6. similation resualt with high local people density In the simulations following the rules in the test 2, we add Ambihood into the community, by changing the strategies of installing Ambihood, we can get different outcomes. 1. Install ambihood after a stable attitude had formed: because the Ambihood is a interaction device works between local people and newcomers, the participation of newcomers is vital. So if the local people density is too high, after negative attitude has formed it s difficult to change it even with the Ambihood because of the missing part of the participation of newcomers. if the local density is appropriate, then adding Ambihood could change the attitude of the local people who s living around the device instantly, and they would influence more people around them slowly. Figure 7. instal ambihood after attitude had formed in high local people density community.

7 Figure 7. install ambihood after attitude had formed in relatively low local people density community 1. before installation. 2. install ambihood. 3. the new stable state. 2. Install ambihood while local people s attitude is forming: While the local people s attitude is forming, the place we install ambihood would become important. If it s installed in green-dominated area, then the effect is low. however, if it s installed in the red-dominated area, the attitude of local living there would change dramatically, easily becoming high-tolerance people. 3. Install ambihood before newcomers move in: Installing ambihood before newcomers move in would be the best strategy, always results in a high-tolerance dominated situation, which means a high social cohesion. Different installing patterns would affect the attitude area distribution as well as the ratio of the number of high-tolerance local people to the number of total locals.

8 Figure 8. Different ways of installing Ambihood before newcomers move in, and their relatively stable state.

9 Discussion Compared results of developments naturally or with the installation of Amhihood, we found that the stimulation with Amhihood reflect developments that the turtle in red color become the most kind which means it leads to a better social cohesion condition of the community. This result meets the original design goal of Ambihood. And according to results in test 2, we found that the patter. has the better influence on the development of high tolerance people. In the future, field study in real context can reference this result. Limitation The model on NETLOGO is a simplified one, relationships between residents and environmental influence are delimited with several attributes, but the realistic condition can be much more complicated. And the ratio of local people with different tolerance is setted equally in the stimulation, but the realistic condition is unknown which needs more surveys. Reference Forrest, R., & Kearns, A. (2001). Social Cohesion, Social Capital and the Neighbourhood. Urban Studies, 38(12), doi: / S. Chan(2001). Complex adaptive systems. MIT, Cambridge. Eve Mitleton-Kelly. (1997). Organisations as Co-evolving Complex Adaptive Systems, British Academy of Management Conference. Jenks, C. (2004). Urban culture (p. p60). London: Routledge. Fukuyama, M., & Sevig, T. (1999). Integrating spirituality into multicultural counseling (p. p99). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Kontra, M., Phillipson, R., Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & Várady, T. (1999). Language: a right and a resource (p. p. 740). Budapest: Central European University Press.