The urbanization of poverty: rethinking the production of unjust geographies

Abstract

Hegemonic studies understand urban poverty as a consequence of an uneven distribution of resources differentially distributed throughout the city. In this context, this article aims at further understanding the production of urban inequalities and socio-spatial injustice through a Lefebvrian approach, which considers space as an active agent and not merely a physical environment. It proposes the use of the concept “urbanization of poverty”, understood as the trialectic production of poverty through urbanization, leading to unjust geographies through processes of unequal geographic development and accumulation by dispossession.