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Paper short abstract:

Based on theoretical reflections on conversion factors and insights from empirical data on participatory urban planning processes, the paper elaborates how collective budgets enhance capabilities for individual well-being and collective agency to build resilience to multiple and overlapping crises.

Paper long abstract:

As cities worldwide are experiencing multiple health, security, and environmental crises, interpersonal variations in accessing opportunities result in increasing urban poverty, threatening “important matters as the freedom to live long, or the ability to escape avoidable morbidity, or the opportunity to have worthwhile employment, or to live in peaceful and crime-free communities” (Sen 1999, 291).

Expecting the rise of global shocks, the United Nations advocate for commitment and tailored support for collective interventions (UN-HABITAT 2022, xxvii-18) to respond to complex socio-environmental challenges. Highlighting the “force of social influences on the extent and reach of individual freedom” (Sen 1999, xi-xii), scholars identify collective capabilities as composition of “various personal capability structures” arising out of social interaction (Ballet et al. 2007, 198) that create capabilities sets beyond personal reach (Ibrahim 2020, 213f), benefitting “the collectivity at large” (Ibrahim 2006, 398). Understanding collective capabilities as socially dependent individual capabilities, Sen (2009, 245) recommends distinguishing “adequately between the individual characteristics that are used in the capability approach and the social influences that operate on them”.

To reason on possible influences of collectives on the different determinants for capabilities, the article develops a “conversion factor taxonometry” (Sebastianelli 2016, 1-4) with homogeneous, value-neutral categories based on Heidemann’s (1981, 1992, 2004)reflections on regime-budget-interrelations, who specifies budgets of time, tools, and skills that need to be employed in sufficient quantities to enable activities under circumstances established by valid regimes, composed of external time slots, standards of social interaction, and set of locations. Heidemann states that members of collectivities can pool individual budgets and share returns to collectively meet needs and spread risks: Additional time spent to coordinate group members creates a collective ability to engage in parallel activities for effective division of labour. The pooling of tools ensures their effective use in operating on the environment. Skills and knowledge are transmitted through inter-individual relationships and verbal communication, especially during early childhood or under conditions of illiteracy. Rigid time slots can be met by adapting the collective time budget. Standards of social interaction as common beliefs, aspirations, values, norms, or orders, with their behaviour-regulating prohibitions, permissions, and obligations are influenced by groups. Finally, the collective use of a common territory shapes the set of locations.

Those theoretical reflections of the instrumental and intrinsic role of collectives in enhancing individual well-being and addressing socio-environmental challenges are verified by means of empirical data of a participatory urban planning process in Brazil.