Even in the absence of population growth, many communities continue to experience urban sprawl, or low-density fringe development.  Motivated by the example of post-industrial dynamics in a small Illinois town, this paper explores the problem of fragmenting social networks enabled by spatial distancing between distinct socioeconomic classes.  Increased fragmentation becomes a concern for community efficacy in establishing new economic opportunities and for potential sources of conflict between sub-communities.  This paper develops a framework for considering the spatial dynamics of social network evolution in the face of neighborhood and community migration.  The social network is initialized using a small world formulation (Watts 1999) that then evolves as migration patterns affect the probability of "rewiring" social connections.  Spatially, some connections are established for neighborhood proximity. Socially, connections are added based upon similarity of economic class. In effect, the probability of rewiring becomes endogenous as the social network evolves over time. A variety of analyses are conducted with migration probabilities under this endogenous rewiring to explore the relative cohesiveness of the emergent community networks.  The development of this abstract model is discussed in relation to further application and calibration to a real-world case community.

Watts, Duncan J.  1999.  Small Worlds:  The Dynamics of Networks Between Order and Randomness.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.