ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the process of spatial differentiation of human communities. It argues that the differentiation of places implies sets of advantages and disadvantages for persons who are tied to each place and thus affects the chances for individual upward or downward mobility. A common response to this fact is a continuing collective effort to influence the pattern of development among places through political action. Places with early advantages, by making full political use of their superior resources can potentially reinforce their relative position within the system of places. The spatial differentiation tends to be transformed over time into an increasingly rigid stratification of places. By emphasizing on the stratification aspect of spatial differentiation, the author proposes a reorientation toward a more political human ecology with spatial differentiation seen not only as the population's natural selective response to its habitat, but also as a means of organizing inequality.
