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This paper seeks to propose a research approach and methods for knowledge‐based development (KBD) researchers and practitioners exploring the social capital and knowledge networks of a city region.

This paper proposes that regional surveys be carried out using a harmonised question set to investigate social capital and the gap identified in this set regarding “bridging” questions, i.e. questions allowing researchers to look at distant types of relationships between business associates, maybe in different organisations. The approach responds to regional development agendas identifying the need to address underlying weaknesses (participation, connectivity and enterprise) in city regions specifically. Specific questions are suggested as a starting point for further development and integration with social network analysis.

A practical research approach and methods are described that can be used at the city region level.

One limitation of the research is the potential technological exclusion of research participants without internet access.

The research outlined here postulates the use of special sets of survey questions that already exist that can be adapted and used to investigate relationships among networks (formal and informal) of city region populations, identified through their links with and between organisations, groups and networks, which will provide rich insights on the current state of city region knowledge networks in order to facilitate their improvement socially and economically through the power of people and their relationships.

A research methodology and subsequent practical knowledge to be derived for application at city region level are provided.

The purpose of this study is to estimate the determinants of household food insecurity in the Gauteng City-Region, South Africa. This is motivated by the fact that food insecurity remains a key challenge at the household level in South Africa. Furthermore, the Gauteng Province has been rapidly urbanising due to a migrant influx, both locally and internationally. The findings will assist the country in achieving its mandate on the local economic development policy, Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2.

The study adopted a quantitative cross-section design, utilising the binary logistic regression technique, drawing on the Gauteng City-Region Observatory Quality of Life 2020/2021 data, consisting of 13,616 observations, randomly drawn from nine municipalities in Gauteng City-Region.

The main findings of the study highlight unemployment, health status, education, household size, indigency and income as the main determinants of food insecurity in Gauteng City-Region. Policies towards sustainable urban agriculture, improving access to education, increasing employment and income, and health for all can help improve the food insecurity status of households in the Gauteng City-Region.

Further studies would require an in-depth assessment of household coping mechanisms, as well as the influence of household income (notably government social grants) and access to credit on household food security status, to better understand the dynamics of food security in the Gauteng City-Region.

Determinants of food insecurity should be considered when developing and implementing policies to reduce food insecurity in urban municipalities.

The study is of interest as it interdicts food insecurity issues, which have an effect on socio-economic well-being.

The study adds value by providing evidence on the determinants of food insecurity in an urban setting in a developing country. Gauteng is the richest of all provinces in South Africa and is also at the receiving end of internal and international migration. Factors affecting food insecurity have changed in the nine cities. This compromises nutrition safety and calls for targeted policy interventions.

This paper aims to present a case study of the Manchester metropolitan area's efforts at implementing a regional approach to economic policy making and metropolitan governance. Vis‐à‐vis an emerging proposal for a concerted and effective approach towards the development of a governance model for the Manchester City Region, the paper aims to discuss the competing proposals for a mayoral and more “federalist” model of coordinating local policies in the area..

The paper examines the roles of different agencies – business representations and local authorities – in working towards a form of coherent governance for the city region against the backdrop of the many current precedents of such arrangements across Europe.

The paper finds that local authorities in the Greater Manchester area tend to favour a federalist City Region approach with greater autonomy for each participating local government. Yet, the alternative mayoral model retains the advantage of a distinct identity and direct accountability. In any case, a strong and coherent private sector input on key issues affecting the economy and its development in the Manchester City Region are required, but, as yet, not always sufficiently articulated.

Finding an “appropriate” model of city‐regional governance is a very topical issue. The contribution of this paper is thus timely and offers a good insight into the practical side of coordinating public and private sector interests and ways of making policies as part of city‐regional governance.

The paper aims to evaluate the knowledge-based urban development (KBUD) dynamics of a rapidly emerging knowledge city-region, Tampere region, Finland.

The paper empirically investigates Tampere region’s development achievements and progress from the knowledge perspective.

The research, through qualitative and quantitative analyses, reveals the regional development strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of Tampere region.

The paper provides useful suggestions based on the lessons learned from the Tampere case investigation that could shed light on the KBUD journey of city-regions.

While conventional views of foreign investment activity primarily relate to efficiency-seeking investments, the authors argue that most other outward foreign direct investments (OFDIs) likely have positive effects on income development in the home region. Data on the US urban system not only illustrates this but also shows that this impact is not equal in all city-regions. The purpose of this paper is to develop an explanation as to why high- and low-income cities are associated with self-reinforcing cycles of OFDI activity that have different home-region impacts.

Conventional views assume that inward foreign direct investments (IFDIs) have a positive impact on target regions, while OFDIs are often treated as the flip side of this story, being seen as having negative effects by shifting jobs and income abroad. This paper counters this logic by developing a conceptual argument that systematically distinguishes different types of OFDIs and relates them to economic development effects in the home (investing) region.

Using a co-evolutionary conceptualization, this paper suggests that many high-income cities are characterized by a virtuous cycle of development where high, successful OFDI activity generates both positive income effects as well as incentives to engage in further OFDIs in the future, thus leading to additional income increases. In contrast, it is suggested that low-income cities are characterized by what we refer to as vicious cycles of development with low OFDI activity, few development impulses and a lack of incentives and capabilities for future investments.

This paper develops a counter-perspective to conventional views of OFDI activity, arguing that these investments have a positive impact on regional income levels. The authors develop a spatially sensitive explanation which acknowledges that OFDIs do not trigger a linear process but are associated with diverging inter-urban development paths and may contribute to higher levels of intra-urban inequality. From these findings, the authors derive conclusions for future research and public policy.

This paper aims to examine a pan‐regional initiative, The Northern Way. The argument is framed within the on‐going city‐region debate to demonstrate some of the challenges and difficulties of working in collaboration and partnership across associational networks. It seeks to highlight the importance of institutional and local legacies and politics for understanding the nature of this particular form of pan‐regional arrangement.

The paper draws on existing literature and other secondary source material from policy and guidance documents, participant observation in regional and sub‐regional meetings, and supplemented with primary interview data.

The Northern Way, promoted by central government to manage decline in the Greater North of England, demonstrated a continued legacy of regional disparities and an attempt to move city actors from inter and intra regional rivalry towards collaboration and partnership. As an associational network, the fluidity of scales and wide ranging social forces impacted on coordination and integration of processes, institutions, plans and strategies. This emergent governance form exemplified institutional turbulence, as powers were re‐configured continuously across scales and, across policy sectors and policy actors. The Northern Way was a very complicated arrangement of networks across regional and sub‐regional territories, and its lack of autonomy from central government hampered its overall effectiveness and strategic approach.

The paper provides a valuable insight for academics, practitioners and policy makers into some of the challenges and difficulties of managing across a pan‐regional associational network. It is original because most of the earlier literature focuses solely on city‐regions rather than a specific pan‐regional initiative such as the one under enquiry here.

This paper explores the challenges of food security from source to consumption of agri-food value chain by considering urban–rural linkages in city region food systems (CRFSs) and proposes a strategic framework for CRFS identifying strategies to promote urban–rural linkages among multiple stakeholders.

A qualitative case study approach to a fruit and vegetable value chain from rural source to consumption in the Colombo City region identifies the challenges of food security. A snowballing sampling method was used to gather information from retailers, wholesalers, commission agent, farmers and consumers. The data were collected through face-to-face interviews, observations and secondary data sources. The data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Challenges in food security in the value chain related to five areas: input and production, infrastructure, public institutional support and policy, finance, and food market. Colombo city is heavily dependent on food sourced from other cities due to limited land and lack of locally situated commercially oriented farmers.

This research is limited to a selected number of fruits and vegetables in the Colombo city region and leaves out other food items.

This study contributes to informing policy and decision-making processes to promote a more balanced rural to city food value chain in Colombo City that could benefit all stakeholders from rural small-scale producers to urban consumers.

Advocates of the role of city‐regions in economic development seek lessons from other countries to boost the case. But processes of lesson learning raise many challenges and the purpose of this paper, therefore, is to argue that it is necessary to shift from descriptive comparison to a better understanding and explanation of what works where.

The approach taken in the paper is to review recent debates about the design of comparative studies and suggests a range of comparative questions.

The paper draws on insights from the ESRC Research Seminar and other papers in this issue and helps clarify some of the issues that may be involved in developing a better comparative understanding of the emergence and impacts of new “experimental”, time‐limited regional institutions.

The paper argues for more rigorous comparative research.

Questions are raised about current lesson learning concerning the governance of city regions.

The paper contributes to new debates about the potential of comparative study.

This piece of work reports on the initial findings of ongoing research conducted at the Victoria University of Manchester UK, aiming at categorizing the city‐region’s different forms of knowledge capital. Using a global knowledge‐based development (KBD) model as an instrument, information about recent urban regeneration and development experiences in its inner city and beyond have been collected, identified and analyzed. Such research is aiming to establish Manchester’s potential to become a knowledge city. In this aim, the current research paper will report first on a review of the theoretical background behind the concepts of the knowledge city (KC) and KBD, which have been the catalysts to a systematic account of facts and figures of urban regeneration developments within Manchester. The review will be followed by the narrative of KDB observations on the continuous flow of creation and renovation initiatives; with observations on outcomes that can be traced out through Manchester’s cumulated and diversified capital repositories and agents. Such flow is presented through the eyes of the different actors involved (authorities, researchers, and partnership organizations), whose voices are present in the diverse capital landmarks of the city. The global knowledge‐based model used has served as a comprehensive framework for consistent, systematic gathering of primary data on capital systems for a deeply contextualized case study. It has facilitated powerful inter‐relational capabilities for researchers’ insights on the city‐region’s potential knowledge capital. It has also provided the platform for systematic identification of socio‐economic issues beyond level one. In the case of Manchester, the model helped interrelating concerns about social inclusion, access, and skills for sustainable development. They were also re‐positioned to their true dimensions as the KBD model has assisted research with the systematic identification of the (knowledge capital) roles that city‐region actors (k‐agents and k‐repositories) are playing, and the solutions they are bringing to those concerns and beyond. Most of all, the KBD model facilitated multiple insights into how global challenges are finding local solutions. And Manchester’s case is undoubtedly filling a gap in the recent literature of knowledge cities. This contribution, amongst many others, is aiming to trigger further debate through a rainbow of contrasting points of view about what KBD has meant for the city‐region of Manchester. It is also hoped that a renewed interest in capital systems research and its social policy implications in and about the city would be triggered as well.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the role of territory in (city‐) regionalisation and to revisit the problems of distance from the core in cluster strategies. The paper further aims to discuss the implications of how agglomeration and networking economies, strongly promoted and based on city regions, are being realised across national boundaries.

The paper argues that there are negative spatial impacts for those areas which do not and cannot establish “core cluster” status. The focus on such “cores” threatens to exacerbate the peripherality of the non‐core regions of the European Union, and especially those in the external (northern) border regions of Europe.

Against an evolving pattern of reducing effective distances across the mainland continent through EU funding, Celtic and Nordic Europe is facing a relative increase in peripherality. Ownership and control of industry and the economy are becoming ever more concentrated and centralised at the core, and monetary and fiscal policies are driven by the needs of the market and so of the demands of the metropolitan heart of the continent. While the new territorial clusters are promising growth and development for some regions allowing them to converge on the core, this should not be allowed to obscure the threats to others which are becoming ever more disadvantaged.

The paper highlights a major, albeit not much acknowledged, threat emanating from the current focus on city regions as “economic champions” in debates and policy making. Not only does this threaten to overlook, but, indeed, may create areas of “exclusion” and peripherality.