One interesting observation I made,
using social sorting is that people select the cities, towns and
neighborhoods they live in to accommodate their skills.
The people with the most social skills, skills for work and daily life, migrate to the dense urban areas. From the center of a dense urban area there is a ring of clines reaching outward to the ex-urban areas where people with the least developed social skills choose to live.
The most important social skill is the ability to live, work and associate with people who are least like ourselves. If a person is willing to live with people of different political, educational, ethnic and social class qualities they live in the center of the clines. The less willing they are, the more they feel comfortable with homogeneity, the further out from the central dense urban area they live.
This
arises because it offers personal advantages. I dated a number of
women who lived in outer ring suburbs. Invariably, these women found
people like themselves, with the same level of social skill; their
friends and neighbors were able to help them with housing, child
rearing, daily life and finding jobs.
A few of my friends have confirmed this observation. Have you?