Governing capabilities, not places – how to understand social sustainability implementation in urban development

Social sustainability’s implementation in urban development is a complex endeavour that demands alternative forms of governance. This article draws on the capabilities approach as an evaluative framework to better understand this process. Through in-depth case comparison two Dutch projects, study analyses how collaborative governance situations (i.e. actors, activities and phases) relate expansions resident areas. The findings present three principles for ‘capability-centred governance’ social sustainability development: (1) integrate human logic into (2) balance strong goal commitment with experimentalist approaches (3) institutionalise implementation. concludes requires conceptualisation which improvements people’s lives are not seen self-evident consequences set place-based policy interventions, but instead guiding principle should continuously be reflected upon learned from during different phases processes.