A concept of a number of ethnic groups, cultures, and religions in a society fusing together to produce new cultural and social forms. Brueckner and Smirnov (2007) J. Reg. Sci. 47, 2 suggest that under mild conditions of interconnectedness, a society proceeds inexorably toward homogenization, with waves of foreign immigration, introducing unconnected groups into the population, providing short-term infusions of heterogeneity. As links form between these new groups and the rest of the population, the homogenization process typically reasserts.