The Planned 'City-region' in the New Urban Agenda: An Appropriate Framing for Urban Food Security?

Abstract

The New Urban Agenda (NUA) sets out a new role for towns and cities across the world, and acknowledges nutritious and adequate food (i.e. urban food security) as an important component of sustainable urban development. In the NUA and related planning guidelines the concept of the city region informs both food-system planning and urban and territorial planning. However, the use of the city-region model, with antecedents in both regional economic planning and food policy, disregards critiques of the concept and ignores current economic, social and institutional realities as well as the significant diversity of urban centres and regions across the globe.