Obesity/fatness and the City : critical urban geographies

There has been increasing emphasis on the built urban environment within anti-obesity policy in the UK and elsewhere in the global north as part of a shift away from a model of individual responsibility to focus on so-called ‘obesogenic environments’. While recent policy has called for urban design and planning professionals to eradicate obesity there is, however, significant uncertainty in the science surrounding the relationship between body size, urban design and health and little definitive evidence about what works. In this paper, we therefore outline connections between critical geographies of obesity and urban geographies in order to question the ways in which obesity is framed and politicised in relation to the urban built environment