Survival strategies for when only the street remains. Cartographic essay about how the homeless population experience the city of Londrina

Abstract

Brazilian cities reflect the unequal and excluding society historically produced. With the advance of urbanization and the lack of public social policies truly focused on income distribution and social equity, we observe an exponential increase of people living on the streets of large and medium-sized cities. This population lives in extremely miserable conditions and, as a form of survival, they create strategies to satisfy their minimum needs. Thus, intimate activities are performed in the public space and the city is reshaped to support these precarious lives. This city produced by poverty is unwanted by formality, which often makes use of instruments to hide, invisibilise and suppress it. This paper investigates and maps a representative section of this invisible city experienced by the homeless population.

Keywords: urban segregation; homeless people; invisible city; right to the city.