Serious Games, Mental Images, and Participatory Mapping: Reflections on a Set of Enabling Tools for Capacity Building

Increasing complexity of societal questions requires participatory processes that engage with capable participants. We adopted Horellis’ stance on participation as not an isolated event but a constant communication between different groups that can be assured by using enabling tools. We applied the Capability Approach to frame a capacity-building process and understand how this framework can support a collective of entrepreneurs to become aware of their capabilities (and the impact of an ongoing urban renewal process on these capabilities). The Capability Approach emphasizes the personal and structural conditions that impact a person’s capability to choose—the conditions that affect the process of determining what a person values. The paper builds on a two year capacity-building process conducted in Genk, Belgium, and proposes a conceptual framework for building capacities, in which the process and outputs collide with ideas of choice, ability, and opportunity, notions central to the Capability Approach. The case study looks at one of the main commercial streets of the city (Vennestraat) and reflects on a set of enabling artefacts used to engage proprietors in the capacity-building process. This capacity-building process, characterized by the idea of space and capabilities, advances a critical viewpoint on issues related to participatory processes and gives practitioners a set of enabling tools to start a conversation over complex urban transformations, such as the one in Vennestraat.