Aa Frediani

Sen's Capability Approach as a framework to the practice of development

Amartya Sens Capability Approach is increasingly influential in the literature of development economics. It has contributed to development discourse by strengthening the multidimensional approach to poverty analysis and stressing the importance of focusing on agency and empowerment. Nevertheless, the Capability Approach has not yet been applied comprehensively beyond development economics. This article assesses the contribution of the Capability Approach to the field of development planning, by comparing it with the rights-based approach (RBA) and the sustainable-livelihoods framework (SLF). The article argues that by focusing on the capability space, power relations, and participation, the Capability Approach has the potential to become a normative framework to radicalise development practices.

Amartya Sen, the World Bank, and the Redress of Urban Poverty: A Brazilian Case Study

While there is some suggestion of a re‐orientation in the World Banks income‐cantered conceptualization of poverty to one based on Amartya Sens concept of ‘development as freedom’, it is hard to uncover definitive evidence of such a re‐orientation from a study of the Banks urban programmes in Brazil. This paper attempts an application of Sens capability approach to the problem of improving the urban quality of life, and contrasts it with the World Banks approach, with specific reference to a typical squatter upgrading project in Novos Alagados in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.

Approaching Development Projects from a Human Development and Capability Perspective

Abstract This paper discusses the relevance of the human development and capability approach for development project planning, management and evaluation. With reference to the set of five other studies that it introduces, the paper suggests in which areas insights from human development and capability thinking offer advances and in which areas such thinking needs to link with and be complemented or corrected by thinking from other sources and traditions. The paper aims at capturing the learning from recent experiences and studies, both for project planning and for the human capabilities perspective.

Insurgent citizenship practices: The case of Muungano wa Wanavijiji in Nairobi, Kenya

The notion of ‘insurgent citizenship’ has emerged as a critical concept to highlight the insufficiencies of the modernist liberal citizenship project. Referring to the ‘everyday practices’ of disenfranchised communities, it holds particular resonance in the urban context, and represents a range of formal and informal practices employed to claim for missing entitlements. Nevertheless, this notion is imbued with a certain ambiguity, and insurgent practices have manifested in a diversity of approaches ranging from contestation to negotiation-based practices. This is evident in the insurgent practices of Muungano wa Wanavijiji, a federation of the urban poor within Nairobi, Kenya, and a member of the Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) network. This paper explores three key tensions experienced by the movement, which navigate trade-offs between: the development of a strong representational body and respect for internal diversity; strategies that can influence and contest hegemonic practices while resisting co-option; and mechanisms of engagement that generate immediate and material benefits while also pursuing structural change. Reflecting on these tensions, the role of negotiation and contestation-based practices in claiming substantive citizenship rights in Nairobi is explored. The case highlights the shifting complexity of insurgent citizenship practices that necessitates a deeper examination and disentanglement, exploring the contextual tensions and trade-offs insurgent movements face to obtain entitlements within the city.

Processes for Just Products: The Capability Space of Participatory Design

This chapter explores the relationship between the process and product of participatory design. It argues that there is an unhelpful dichotomy that pushes the thinking and practice of participatory design through two separate schools of thought: planning versus design. This chapter suggests that advancements in overcoming such challenge can be reached by perceiving design through the lens of the capability approach. The concept of ‘capability space’ is proposed to explore the process and product components of freedom associated to participatory design. The chapter then elaborates on a series of normative values based on concepts from radical democracy and social production of space literature that aims at supporting the application of the concept of capability space. Design is embedded in the processes of deepening democratic practices by revealing power relations and navigating through dissensus.

Gender, difference and urban change: implications for the promotion of well-being?

This article examines the impacts of urban change on the well-being of women and men, and girls and boys living in cities, and explores how gender intersects with other social relations to differentiate these impacts. It then considers the implications of intersectionality for organizations aiming to promote the interests of specific social groups (such as women or people with disabilities) vis à vis urban change by looking at the experience of Leonard Cheshire’s Asha project, which works with girls and boys with disabilities in Mumbai. It concludes that organizations working to promote the interests of identity-based constituents should both base their strategies around research that recognizes the instersectional nature of social identities and also develop agendas for change that build platforms for social justice that unite, rather than fragment, identity-based claims.

Institutionalization and Depoliticization of the Right to the City: Changing Scenarios for Radical Social Movements

The right to the city, a concept previously associated with radical social movements, has been accepted by several governments and has inspired new public policies. However, some authors see this process of institutionalization as involving a loss of a significant part of the radical origins of the concept. This article approaches this process and the new opportunities and limitations it may entail for social movement organizations with a more radical perspective on the right to the city. We explore the paradigmatic case of Brazil and the action of a particular organization, the Movimento dos Sem Teto da Bahia (MSTB, or Homeless Movement of Bahia) in the city of Salvador. We draw on the discussion of the politics of the right to the city and on an original combination of social movement theories and critical discourse analysis in order to analyse political-institutional and discursive changes in urban reform in Brazil and Salvador. We then analyse how the MSTB moves within this new context, navigating its tensions and contradictions while advancing a radical project of transformation of urban reality within a reformist context. We also reflect on the relevance of Lefebvrian ideas for understanding and inspiring contemporary struggles for the right to the city.

Insurgent Regeneration: Spatial Practices of Citizenship in the Rehabilitation of Inner-City São Paulo

The city center of São Paulo, Brazil, has increasingly become a key site for local housing movements to challenge the rules and practices of differentiated citizenship in urban Brazil. This is in line with Sassen’s analysis arguing that the last two decades have seen an increasingly urban articulation of global struggles, and a growing use of urban space to make political claims. Organized vacant buildings and occupations led by social movements in the center of São Paulo are prominent examples of urban spaces being appropriated to advance the claims of otherwise marginalized urban subjects. In the face of rising inequalities and social and spatial divisions across the city, squatted buildings emerge as a space of negotiation with political consequences at various times and scales. Apart from acquiring a symbolic value in the debate over regeneration and gentrification processes in the inner-city area of São Paulo, vacant building occupations are simultaneously intended by their proponents as a means to provide shelter to those in need, experiment with alternative ways of producing low-income housing in well-located urban areas, and contribute to wider demands for urban reform across Brazil. This article explores in detail the spatial practices of individuals and groups occupying a building known as Ocupação Marconi. It focuses on the production of the building being seen as a device for advancing alternative formulations of citizenship, and discusses the implication of this interpretation for a renewed definition of the notion and practice of urban regeneration.

Re-imagining Participatory Design: Reflecting on the ASF-UK Change by Design Methodology

The thinking and practice of participatory design in processes of urban development and informal settlement upgrading has been associated with a variety of agendas and purposes. Sometimes it has been used as a mechanism of “inclusion” for a predefined vision and ideal of the city, and at other times it has been used as a means to expand the “collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization”. Similar discussions have taken place in debates around the links between democracy and design, in which design has sometimes been approached as a means of improving or enabling structures of governance and at other times of opening up new spaces for contestation and trajectories for social change.

Space and Capabilities: Approaching Informal Settlement Upgrading through a Capability Perspective

Definitions around the concept of poverty have fundamental implications as to how the role of space is understood in shaping and tackling deprivations in the urban context. The capability approach has emerged as a prominent evaluative framework in the redefinition of poverty as a multi-dimensional, dynamic and socially constructed phenomenon. However, there has been very limited interrogation of how such an understanding of poverty takes into account the role of space and how it could therefore contribute to discussions exploring the relationship between space and poverty. This chapter draws on different case studies to explore how capabilities are conditioned by spatial arrangements and imaginaries, but also how the expansion of capabilities of the urban poor can contribute towards a more socially just production of space.