ABSTRACT

The Capability Approach, developed by Sen and Nussbaum, has recently gained increasing attention in the transport literature. This paper adds to this growing body of literature by investigating how the approach can generate consistent evaluative approaches to inform (urban) transport planning. The paper reviews the mobility literature that has investigated the Capabilities Approach and identifies the opportunities and challenges of employing the approach as a basis for transport planning. The review highlights the different, and sometimes patchy, ways in which the key notions of the approach have been conceptualised and operationalised. Discussing this growing but scattered literature, the paper embraces the emerging direction that understands accessibility as the capability that transport planning and policy should consider. Further refining this understanding, the paper proposes a twofold evaluative approach combining a top-down and a bottom-up component to capture the myriad of conversion factors shaping people’s accessibility-as-capability and functioning. By systematically adopting the Capabilities Approach, transport planning and mobility policies will be directed to enhancing each person’s freedom to pursue the life they have reason to value in contemporary societies.

摘要

由 Sen 和 Nussbaum 开发的能力方法最近在交通文献中越来越受到关注。本文通过研究该方法如何产生一致的评估方法来为（城市）交通规划提供信息，从而增加了这一不断增长的文献。本文回顾了研究能力方法的移动性文献，并确定了采用该方法作为交通规划基础的机遇和挑战。审查强调了该方法的关键概念被概念化和实施的不同方式，有时是不完整的。在讨论这些不断增长但分散的文献时，本文提出了将可达性理解为交通规划和政策应考虑的能力的新兴方向。进一步完善这种理解，本文提出了一种双重评估方法，结合自上而下和自下而上的组件，以捕捉塑造人们作为能力和功能的可访问性的无数转换因素。通过系统地采用能力方法，交通规划和流动政策将旨在增强每个人在当代社会中追求他们有理由珍视的生活的自由。