From the dark end of the street to the bright side of the road: Automated redistricting of areas using physical barriers as dividers of social space

This study examines the properties of administrative areas compared to a new method of automated redistricting when measuring social differentiation and segregation. Using physical barriers, such as roads, railways, streams, areas of uninhabited nature and the like as dividers of social space, this study explores alternative ways of thinking social belonging and social cohesion that are beyond standard measures of geography and utilize areas of smaller size and population count. The geographical data is linked to Danish register data of the total Danish population in 2015, N=4,986,125 on key variables of income, months of completed education and ethnicity. The overall findings in this study suggests that rethinking geography when localizing social enclaves and segregated communities yields better results than using the more illogical administrative areas. Both visual inspection, enthropy-levels of homogeneity and intraclass correlation suggests that smaller areas that are divided by physical objects serve as a better reservoir of social cohesion and therefore better measurement of social inequality.