Comparative Segregation Analytics

Sergio Rey, Renan X. Cortes, Elijah Knaap

Comparative segregation analysis holds the potential to provide rich in- sights into urban socio-spatial dynamics. However, comparisons of the lev- els of segregation between two, or more, cities at the same point in time complicated by different spatial contexts. The extent to which differences in segregation between two cities is due to differences in spatial structure or to differences in composition remains an open question. This paper de- velops a framework to disentangle the contributions of spatial structure and ethnic composition in carrying out comparative segregation analysis. The approach uses spatially explicit counterfactuals embedded in a Shapley de- composition. We illustrate this approach in a case study of the 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S.