Ecology of living
Introduction
The concept of human habitat, which is used in human ecology and especially in urban planning, is an extension by analogy of the ecological concept of habitat. It refers to the set of material and institutional factors that condition the existence of a localized human population. In architecture, the term is also used to refer to the built spaces and urban spaces where the life of human beings takes place.
As explained from the field of studies of human habitat and human ecology - developed by authors such as Echeverría-Ramírez, M. C., Yory, C. M., Sánchez R., J., Gutiérrez, F., Zuleta R., F. B. and Muñoz, E., and others such as Marín, D., or Múnera, M., based on the book What is habitat? (Echeverría et al., 2009)[1]—, the first moment in which this concept began to be used was the Habitat I Conference in 1976, imported from ecology, to be used on the issue of human settlements: "as can be seen, the habitat itself is an interdisciplinary concept that crosses and unites several fields of knowledge through the link made by ecology, from natural sciences such as biology, to human and social sciences such as architecture" (Marín-Vanegas, 2024, p.451)[2].*.
Borders
The human habitat is classified or defined according to the size of the population that inhabits it and intervals are established from a few thousand to a few million.
The range that is established is not very clear, especially the minimum. Furthermore, depending on the type of country, an average city will be very different in size if its settlement is an agricultural or industrial exploitation, if it is a desert or forested area, etc. But in any case, in a survey, for example, the first piece of information is about the type of place based exclusively on the number of inhabitants. Much more important than this is now the new development of the human habitat in the form of metropolitan areas highly dependent on one or several cities, where jobs, administrative management and others are provided for their inhabitants. Also in the same context, it is very interesting that centers such as hospitals, universities, shopping areas and other mass care areas no longer have to be located in a large and influential city or even in a town or community, but rather in centers of gravity of the metropolitan area depending on the attraction that is desired to be enhanced and the availability of communications, mainly for cars. The concept of habitat remains valid, but redefined for new settlements with a different social structure.