Well-being Disparities within the Paris Region: A Capabilist Spatialised Outlook

Abstract

This paper advocates, from a normative point of view, the use of multidimensional, capabilist-based urban indicators and shows that they can shed a new empirical light on socio-spatial differentiation in cities. First, the relevance is discussed of Amartya Sen’s capability approach when assessing well-being from an urban, spatialised point of view, and a definition is proposed of a capabilist spatialised well-being indicator (CaS). After presenting the main methodological issues of its operationalisation, an example is presented of an empirical specification based on French data for the Paris region. It is shown that using CaS, instead of more traditional, income-based measures, helps to uncover interesting trends in socio-spatial differentiation in the Paris Region between 1999 and 2006. In particular, even if there was a well-being ‘catching up’ phenomenon between municipalities, a cluster of the least-advantaged municipalities in the Paris region seems to be drifting away in terms of well-being.