Zoë Wundenberg | The gap between the rich and the poor is only getting worser

But the truth is, that line is vertical. And the gap between the two groups isn't just expanding organically on its own, the two groups of people are being forced apart, with more people being pushed down into the ranks of poverty.

As a visual person, I find the imagery my brain builds around this conceptualisation of our social system confronting, brutal, but in need of attention.

The announcement that power prices are set to rise... again ... recently, has broad this image to the fore of my mind. According to research out of RMIT earlier this month, one in four households are already struggling to pay power bills.

One. In. Four.

Imagine how they felt when they read about the pending price hike.

Energy price hikes are disproportionately felt by Australia's lowest income households because a much larger portion of their income is spent on these utilities. A larger proportion of people in this cohort are renting and while recent data suggests one in three Australian homes has solar energy, that's hardly split evenly across rental and owner-occupier properties.

The power increase this winter will plunge those of us struggling with our already high bills into hardship. We'll see less heat and air conditioning used, fewer appliances used, and lights stringently monitored (I put Dad to shame now! I cannot imagine what it'll be like when I stomp through the house declaring that I can't believe how many lights the kids have left on!).

This isn't just about a more expensive bill. This is about loss of utilities.

What's the point of having heating or cooling if you can't afford to turn them on? What happens when poverty drives our usage of services like power and gas? Demand goes down as people start switching off, and prices continue to skyrocket. Even if you are "lucky" enough to have solar panels on your roof as a renter, you can expect to pay up to $19 a week extra in rent for the luxury and face the option of the landlord actually charging you for the use of the sun for profit.

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In 1976, the first UN Conference on Human Settlements was held in Vancouver, Canada. Here, then-prime minister of Canada Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously acknowledged the closeness between human settlements and existence itself, and are racked with such injustices and deficiencies. The UN General Assembly established the UN Centre for Human Settlements one year after this conference in response to the issues raised by the delegates.

The modern urban development story was not meant to take a turn for the worse.

The slums former PM Trudeau spoke about had been trapped in cycles of poverty and decay for decades. They were overcrowded residential urban areas with substandard housing, poor basic services, and squalor. It is easier to ignore them than fix them, to turn your back than roll up your sleeves.

"The slums" as many of us think of them now emerged following the Great Depression in the 20th century. During this time, new communication methods became more widespread, employment levels were at an all time low following WWII and economic wellbeing was offering a sense of security in the world. But neoliberalism brought with it ideas of maximising profit and market integration. Prices began to rise and inequality grew.

I watch those movies with a never-ending sense of dread that one day this will be normal the world over and in parts of Australia. That inaccessibility to power and gas, and the flow on effect of increasing power prices to mean cost-of-living hikes for us all because cost of doing business starts to catch up to the profit margin, will lead us to a world where the poor have nothing and the rich live in an ivory tower, disconnected form the realities of life on the ground.

If life was to become a movie, Blade Runner would not be my first pick. So, when you look back from your tower window and wonder how we got there ... it started with the little things. It always does.