We consider radially symmetric solutions of the degenerate Keller–Segel system
\begin{align*}\begin{cases}\partial_t u=\nabla\cdot (u^{m-1}\nabla u - u\nabla v),\\0=\Delta v -\mu +u,\quad\mu =\frac{1}{|\Omega|}\int_\Omega u,\end{cases}\end{align*}
in balls
$\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n$,
$n\ge 1$, where m > 1 is arbitrary. Our main result states that the initial evolution of the positivity set of u is essentially determined by the shape of the (nonnegative, radially symmetric, Hölder continuous) initial data u0 near the boundary of its support
$\overline{B_{r_1}(0)}\subsetneq\Omega$: It shrinks for sufficiently flat and expands for sufficiently steep u0. More precisely, there exists an explicit constant
$A_{\mathrm{crit}} \in (0, \infty)$ (depending only on
$m, n, R, r_1$ and
$\int_\Omega u_0$) such that if
$u_0(x)\le A(r_1-|x|)^\frac{1}{m-1}$ for all
$|x|\in(r_0, r_1)$ and some
$r_0\in(0,r_1)$ and
$A \lt A_{\mathrm{crit}}$ then there are T > 0 and ζ > 0 such that
$\sup\{\, |x| \mid x \in \operatorname{supp} u(\cdot, t)\,\}\le r_1 -\zeta t$ for all
$t\in(0, T)$, while if
$u_0(x)\ge A(r_1-|x|)^\frac{1}{m-1}$ for all
$|x|\in(r_0, r_1)$ and some
$r_0 \in (0, r_1)$ and
$A \gt A_{\mathrm{crit}}$ then we can find T > 0 and ζ > 0 such that
$\sup\{\, |x| \mid x \in \operatorname{supp} u(\cdot, t)\,\}\ge r_1 +\zeta t$ for all
$t\in(0, T)$.