Human ecology in the context of the city of Bogotá. A brief study case of application of transfer and social appropriation of knowledge: agent-based models

Abstract

The dominant paradigm in place nowadays is in conflict with the natural environment and such paradigm makes part of an approach that is blinded by its mechanism, individualism, and reductionism, and has a highly quantitative and anthropocentric perspective of nature. More than two centuries ago, Thomas Robert Malthus already called our attention in this regard, in his “Essay on the principle of population”, expressing concerns for a geometric population growth but an arithmetic growth of resources. It is true that the perspective for a changing paradigm is relatively more recent, becoming more powerful with  the  emergence  of  the  concept  of  sustainable  development,  which includes a totally different view from the conventional concept, allowing a more biocentric, interconnected, holistic, cooperative approach, and changing the mechanic-based quantitative value to the qualitative value. However, long before the emergence of this concept, the industrial society was faced with a phenomenon resulting from the industrial revolution, the migration to urban areas, and the social, economic, political, environmental, and cultural changes it implies. As a result, the Chicago School of Sociology developed a line of studies called “Human Ecology”, which in short consists of seeking a qualitative methodology for the study of human beings in their natural habitat aligned with their social-urban relations, by establishing a parallel between social and natural systems, as a way of understanding the processes taking place in cities.