Some clarifications about the new perspective

The defining elements of our conceptual framework on Sustainable Human Development at the local level are summarized in the final column of Table 1.1. The table also compares our framework with the building blocks of Amartya Sen's Capability Approach.

At this point, it is important to reinforce the main arguments, resolve potential ambiguities and clarify some crucial starting points for future debates.

Table 1.1 From the CA to SHD at the local level

Table 1.1 (Continued)

Firstly, emphasizing the fundamental significance of the meso level, and advancing a view of SHD at the local level, is not simply a matter of shift­ing the unit of analysis. From the CA and SHD perspectives, it is essential to recognize that most social arrangements intended to expand people's capabilities - their freedom to promote or achieve valuable beings and doings - are determined at the local level.

Secondly, despite the strong emphasis placed on the concept of territory, the proposed perspective avoids the pitfall of claiming that co-location of economic and social actors (in the sense of sharing the same geographi­cal context) is sufficient and necessarily beneficial in terms of knowledge creation and diffusion, innovation, “conscious governance” and capability expansion (among other things). Indeed, a central issue is the territorial embeddedness of local actors - whether public, private or social - not sim­ply in geographical terms, but also socially, culturally and institutionally. Being located in a place does not tell us anything regarding the stakeholders' commitment to local society.

Moreover, as discussed by Boschma (2005), different kinds of proxim­ity exist: cognitive, organizational, social, institutional and geographical. These proximities involve both positive and negative implications for local development, depending on the balance of interactive learning mecha­nisms and lock-in processes. These different proximities interact through relationships of complementarity, substitution and hindrance, the combi­nation of which is crucially important in supporting or weakening mecha­nisms for knowledge creation and diffusion, systemic innovation, conscious governance and broad-based institutional thickness (which can foster pro­cedural or recursive²⁵ actor rationalities), learning potential and social creativity.

Thirdly, despite the clear emphasis on place-based processes and terri­torial dynamics, the core arguments of the SHD perspective at the local level should not be interpreted as supporting a uniquely contingent view with no space for comparative analysis or investigation of universal pat­terns. Instead, the transversal focus of this perspective (the factors enabling territorial well-being and capability expansion) seeks to identify those trends and processes that characterize SHD patterns across different contexts (as shown in the case studies - see chapters 4 and 5). It follows that it is of crucial importance to systematically analyse place-based SHD processes characterizing different realities, for the purposes of learning-by-comparing (Hospers and Beugelsdijk, 2002), regional benchmarking²⁶ (Huggins, 2009; Crescenzi and Rodriguez-Pose, 2011; Navarro Arancegui et al., 2012) and investigating diffused - if not universal - territorial processes of capability expansion.

Fourthly, the question of the most appropriate spatial unit of analysis (e.g. cities, regions, local labour market areas) for studying territories and their development processes is approached in this perspective by stressing its historical and context-specific character. No single or preordained scale can be identified in advance; rather, it depends on specific time and place features (partly related to multilevel governance processes) and on the spe­cific analytical focus (e.g. water or waste management, labour supply and commuting, health services system).

Finally, the application of SHD at the local level does not imply viewing each territory of analysis and intervention as isolated from the national and international context, in which it is de facto embedded. Rather, it is clear that the territorial system's enabling or disabling factors depend crucially on policies, norms and coordination rules at the national and international levels, with the latter increasingly strengthened by current globalization dynamics.

Similarly, the global trans-territorial relations characterizing the actual international context constitute a central analytical element within our per­spective, as they entail significant effects on LDSs in terms of both economic and social opportunities. In this regard, attention is devoted to international cooperation initiatives, which can assume a significant role in promoting the expansion of valuable capabilities within the territorial communities of emerging countries, as well as in terms of influencing the international agenda for action and addressing the main global issues that affect the daily life of agents and communities. Following Crescenzi and Rodriguez-Pose (2011), the integration of top-down and bottom-up perspective for local development is viewed as a novel approach, which our perspective aims to advance in research and policy practice.

1.6