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Paper short abstract:

The paper elaborates a detailed framework of conversion factors to plan urban interventions that address the determinants of inequities and enhance the capabilities of different people. It then tests the proposed framework by analysing empirical data from a participatory planning process in Brazil.

Paper long abstract:

In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, all UN Member States have unequivocally committed to leave no one behind (UNSDG 2024). Nonetheless, during the past years, multiple and overlapping crises connected to health, security, and the environment have worsened existing deprivations in many cities worldwide, impacting “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).

The article suggests that the capabilities approach serves with its sensitivity to person-specific circumstances to guide the planning of interventions that leave no one behind. Sen highlights that individual freedoms to achieve well-being are “constrained by the social, political and economic opportunities that are available” (Sen 1999:xi–xii) and dependent on person-specific contingencies in the ability to convert means into valued ends (Sen 2009:254f), categorised as personal, social and environmental conversion factors (Robeyns 2005:99). Robeyns (2017:47) indicates that the knowledge of resources needed in face of specific conversion factors generates information on where interventions can be made. This requires a well-established ‘conversion factor taxonometry’ (Sebastianelli 2016:1–4) with value-neutral, homogeneous categories.

In response to this, the article proposes a conceptual framework of determinants with reference to Heidemann's reflections (2004:R36) on regime-budget-interrelations that are effective upon realising an activity. He specifies budgets of time, tools, and skills that need to be available in sufficient quantities to meet requirements and circumstances established by valid regimes, composed of time slots, standards of social interaction, and set of locations. For each of those general categories, value-neutral components are specified in dialogue with Sen and further authors.

As particular attributes can only be observed and measured after a particular location has been specified (Galster 2001:2112f), categories are conceived with orientation on Whitehead (2010) as non-exhaustive framework to initiate investigations and facilitate the organisation of data, with explicit flexibility to adapt boundaries of categories and alter denominations to locally applicable terms as local cultural and individual variations become clearer during the process. This second phase of adapting the framework is done by analysing empirical data from a participatory planning process in Brazil.

In a last step, categories with a higher incidence of reported obstacles as well as ‘couplings of disadvantages’ (Sen 2009:256) are identified to analyse developed proposals for urban interventions in terms of their respect and potential for enhancing locally valued capabilities.