The habitat and ecology of poverty

Abstract

There is not only a geography of poverty, but also an ecology of poverty. Proportionately, poverty has become more urbanized than population, and ecological poverty has formed metropolitan ecosystems marked by survival adaptations, in which social and environmental degradation correlate. This article discusses human ecology, ecological poverty and the habitat of the poor. Not coincidentally, among the top urban models are those based on “human ecology”. They argue that social segregation is also ecological and nowadays housing and basic -mainly urban- services are relevant variables in measuring multidimensional poverty. In ecological poverty, the human species, which has the greatest legal protection, is usually the most preyed upon by its own species; as an overexploited or underused resource, it fluctuates between merchandise and unemployment. The poor, segregated and exiled from the city, live in ecologically risky areas, with pathological density and cohabitation, in socially and environmentally critical ecosystemic relationships. These are stigmatized places and discriminated populations that survive in suburban and even worse, sub-city and sub-human conditions.