Although the analysis of urban poverty has advanced towards the integration of objective and subjective approaches to assessing urban development, evaluation of quality of life in cities remains tied to a commodity framework which conceptualises it as the mere dotation of urban amenities. Multidimensional indicators of quality of life attempt to overcome this sort of restriction by considering broader informational spaces to assess well-being in cities. The capability approach has gone some way in addressing this as a multidimensional approach, however the interpretation of spatial phenomena has been absent from its application, meaning that the role of space in the configuration of urban poverty has been neglected. Drawing on cross-sectional data, this paper examines a multidimensional measure of urban poverty based on capabilities of young adults in Bogota in order to identify clusters of deprivation and affluence of wellbeing and determine levels of urban segregation based on this type of metric. The result is a spatialised index of capabilities that allow us to assess well-being from a perspective of socio-spatial differences. The findings support the importance of considering spatial patterning of capabilities in understanding poverty dynamics in cities. Spatialised capabilities may help to support urban policy design and promote greater understanding of spatial inequalities in cities.

QoL studies conceptualise urban well-being as a multidimensional process that is influenced by personal and environmental factors. A much less explored field in QoL has to do with the notion of capabilities and functionings as measurements to evaluate the level of quality of life that people experience in cities. By investigating the young adults category, this article develops a measurement of QoL based on the normative framework of the Capability Approach (CA) to capture urban domains that affect quality of life in Bogota. This study introduces a quantitative methodology to use secondary aggregated data to build a QoL measurement based on capabilities. A nonlinear categorical principal component analysis was used to explore the underlying factor structure of a calibration sample (n=6,998). Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted to validate identified factors, revealing a good fit (SRMR=0.033, CFI=0.910). The result is a Young Adult Capability Index (YACI) that empirically explores the use of capability achievements as a space for evaluating urban QoL in young adults. A multiple linear regression was calculated to predict YACI based on additional variables which are sensitive to inequality for young adults. Results show that capability scores are lower once young adults enter adulthood. Women arrive with better capabilities from childhood and adolescence than men, but rapidly undergo a marked process of decapitalisation of capabilities during their transition to adulthood, suggesting the need for more attention in the elaboration of public policies for this type of population.

Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) in Latin America has been marked by a closed top-down process led by coalitions of politicians and technocrats who have chosen patronage relationships as the most convenient interaction with beneficiaries of social programmes. The existence of this type of relationship forces beneficiaries to take part in long-term political alliances in exchange for economic benefits. What seems to be a symbiotic relationship for the parties ultimately can have negative consequences in terms of democratic values and a financial opportunity cost to implement more efficient social investment. The more the exchange persists, the more permanent welfare dependency will prevail in the region.