The Capability Approach and Informal Settlements in Buenos Aires: A Framework for Urban Integration

DENEULIN, SEVERIN; LÉPORE, EDUARDO; MITCHELL, ANN; SUAREZ, ANA LOURDES

Capability Promoting Policies. Enhancing Individual and Social Development

University of Bristol

Lugar: Briston; Año: 2017; p. 111 - 130

This chapter aims ?to put into praxis the human development approach? in the context of urban inequality in Latin America. It responds to the urgent need for social policy alternatives by examining the specific innovative insights that this lens, or novelapproach to social policy, can provide to inform interventions aimed atdecreasing urban fragmentation and a better distribution of wellbeingopportunities (capabilities) across a given urban territory. It is structuredas follows. It begins by discussing the features of the capability approachthat are most relevant in the context of the Latin American city, namelyits multidimensional and sectoral, institutional and agentic perspective.It then uses the first feature to analyse the dynamic interaction betweenyouth employment and education in informal settlements, and territorial characteristics. It moves on to consider the second feature, analysing the role of civil society organisations in the dynamics of capability expansion in informal settlements. Next, it discusses the agentic feature to examine the role culture and religion can play in fomenting agency and capability expansion. Finally, it summarises some of the features of ?capability-promoting policy? in the fragmented and unequal context of the Latin American city.