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DPU Working Paper - No. 176
Locating capabilities in the built environment
5 June 2015
Author: Julia Hansen
Publication Date: May 2015
ISSN: 1474-3280
Spatial form is intimately related to the social processes that create it and which are enabled by it, with powerful implications for spatial and social justice. Through developing a diagram framework, this paper investigates how low-income communities in Thailand shape space in order to pursue a kind of urban development that is beneficial to them. The paper bases the exploration of the dynamics of shaping space in the capability approach, a development paradigm that emphasises people’s well-being and agency in achieving ‘the good life.’ This approach reveals a link between socio-spatial processes and products that is based on human diversity in values, opportunities, and meaning that are attached to spatial form.