Abstract: We propose to start this conversation focusing on some of the major food security and nutrition challenges that are faced by an urbanising world: growing urban food insecurity; under nutrition and over nutrition; the diverse nature of “urban” when speaking of food; Urban poverty in a growing inequitable world, affecting food affordability and accessibility; the importance of the informal food sector and food street trading; accessing urban land for food and last but not least climate and environmental challenges. The lecture will end critically examining, through some selected examples the role played by urban agriculture under its multiple practices to address nutritious food security challenges.

Speaker: Prof. Yves Cabannes is a planner, urban specialist and scholar, chair of Development Planning [2006-2015] at Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London and, previously, lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He was the regional Coordinator of the UN Habitat/UNDP Urban Management Program for Latin America and the Caribbean. He became Emeritus Professor of Development Planning at the University College London / Development Planning Unit in 2015.