Understanding transport-related social exclusion through the lens of capabilities approach

ABSTRACT

The paper builds on the transport-related social exclusion (TRSE) literature and investigates how the insights provided by the Capability Approach can help to inform inclusive transport planning. To address the literature lack of conceptual clarity, we provided a framework that considers how individuals may be prevented from travelling and accessing valued opportunities and how this may lead to TRSE. Ten different dimensions of TRSE that individuals may experience are suggested. Although some dimensions were already proposed in past work, we contributed to this framework by expanding their scope and proposing a new dimension. The paper concludes that policies aimed at reducing TRSE should be concerned with increasing the capabilities of those in accessibility poverty to a sufficient level that enables individuals’ participation in key opportunities of the society. We identified that not every accessibility measure is suitable for assessing TRSE, and the selection of measures must pay attention to their alignment with the idea of accessibility as a human capability. We recommend that conducting an aggregated analysis may be helpful to identify a suitable accessibility measure and to identify regions at risk of TRSE; however, to have a deep understanding of an individual’s TRSE risk factors, a bottom-up analysis is necessary.

KEYWORDS:

• Transport-related social exclusion
• accessibility poverty
• capabilities approach
• transport disadvantage
• accessibility disadvantage
• accessibility as a human capability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001.