UFFU Conference 2022 - Policy Day Book of Abstracts

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POLICY

DAY 2 28—06—22

BOOK OF ABSTRACTS

POLICY

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A written permission of the publishers is also required to use the methods, products, schematics and programs described in this work for industrial or commercial use, and for submitting this or part of this publication in scientific contests.

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ISBN — 978-9-46444-723-1 — 2 / 3

I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E — L E U V E N

URBAN FORESTS FOREST URBANISMS & GLOBAL WARMING —

Developing Greener, Cooler & more Resilient Cities

DAY 2 | POLICY 28—06—22 — The second day of the conference will build on the first day’s focus on science. Presentations will concentrate on various policies developed across scales—from national and regional to city-wide to neighbourhood—in contexts worldwide. On the one hand, there will be a focus on geographic and socio-ecological specificity. On the other hand, key policy options will be gleaned from specific cases and discussed as more general responses to the cascading crises posed by climate change.

08.00 REGISTRATION & COFFEE 08.15 INTRODUCTION & WELCOME

FT = Full Talk 15‘ + 10‘ Response

PK = Pecha Kucha 20“ x 20 Slides + 10‘ Response

08.30 — 11.00

PARALLEL POLICY PAPER SESSIONS POL I → 18

POL II → 26

TRANSFORMATIVE GOVERNANCE & POLICIES Moderator: Cecil Konijnendijk

INNOVATIVE URBAN FOREST DESIGNS & DIALOGUES Moderator: Caroline Vincke

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MANUELA RONCI FT

ALINA DELGADO FT

VÍCTOR MUÑOZ SANZ FT

LUIS PIMENTEL PK

ALAN SIMSON PK

MADDALENA SCALERA PK

SARANTIS GEORGIOU PK

NOVIANTARI PK

AGATHA CZEKAJIO PK

SHEEBA AMIR PK

SARA FAVARGIOTTI & ANNA CODEMO PK

AM —

RAZVAN ANDREI VASIU PK

DISCUSSION

DISCUSSION 11.00 — COFFEE 11.15 — 14.00

PARALLEL POLICY PAPER SESSIONS POL III → 34

POL IV → 42

URBAN & FOREST CONTESTATIONS: EQUITY & EFFICIENCY TENSIONS Moderator: Bruno De Meulder

FROM URBAN FOREST STRATEGIES TO OPERATIONALIZATION Moderator: Kristel Mazy

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ZEBA AMIR

FT

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BRENT GREENE & WENDY WALLS FT

ALEJANDRA PARRA-ORTIZ PK

SOFIA PAOLI PK

JULIA SMACHYLO PK

GERT DE KEYSER PK

PAULA MEIJERINK PK

RENÉ VAN DER VELDE PK

KAMNI GILL PK

KARMEN HOGE PK

JERYLEE WILKES-ALLEMANN PK

COLTRANE MCDOWELL PK

DISCUSSION

DISCUSSION

DAY 2 PROGRAMME POLICY

14.00 LUNCH BREAK 15.00 — 16.40

POLICY EXPERT PANEL Moderated by Hans Leinfelder

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PUAY YOK TAN

→ 10

Greening Singapore: Policies & Programmes

ANDERS BUSSE NIELSEN

→ 12

Public Afforestation in Denmark: Changing peri-urban landscapes into forest landscapes

TIMOTHY BEATLEY

→ 14

Biophilic Cities: Design & planning of cities that love nature

LIESL VANAUTGAERDEN

— PM

→ 16

Co-creating Urban Forests: A new practice

16.20 — COFFEE 16.40 — 18.00

MODERATED DISCUSSION

18.15

BOOK LAUNCH Streets for All: 50 ideas for reshaping resilient cities.

Scan here for latest programme updates

SHYAM KHANDEKAR:

NOTES —

POLICY EXPERT PANEL — Moderation:

HANS LEINFELDER Department of Architecture, KULeuven

PUAY YOK TAN ANDERS BUSSE NIELSEN TIMOTHY BEATLEY LIESL VANAUTGAERDEN

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PUAY YOK TAN — Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore Director, Singapore Botanic Gardens

Puay Yok is Dean’s Chair Associate Professor and leader of the Landscape Studies cluster at the National University of Singapore. His research, teaching, and professional activities focus on the science, policies, and practices of urban greening and ecology of the built environment. He is the coeditor-in-chief for Landscape and Urban Planning (Elsevier), associate editor for Journal of Urban Ecology (Oxford University Press), and Editorial Board Member of the journal Urban Sustainability (Nature Partner Journals). He is also concurrently the Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, a leading institute in tropical botany and horticulture and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Singapore is unusually green as a high-density city, which is all the more remarkable considering that its original forest cover had been almost completely cleared since its founding 200 years ago, and up to the 1960s, it was still a developing country burdened with considerable social and economic challenges. The presentation will share perspectives on how Singapore has managed to be so green, highlight a few examples of how the city is continuing to reinvent itself as a green city, and some challenges which lie ahead.

GREENING SINGAPORE — Policies & programmes

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ANDERS BUSSE NIELSEN — Project Leader for Afforestation, The Danish Nature Agency Independent Landscape Architect under the name of LANDFORCE Anders is known for his hands-on approach to interdisciplinary research. As professor in landscape architecture at both the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and University of Copenhagen he developed a research trajectory that pursues new and encouraging interactions among urban ecology, forestry and landscape architecture.

Parallel, he has worked as an independent landscape architect under the company name of LANDFORCE. In 2019, he changed career tracks and became a project leader for afforestation in the Danish Nature Agency. He is currently responsible for the planning, design and governance of nine new multifunctional peri-urban woodlands in the Eastern Jutland region of Denmark.

In 1989, the Danish Parliament set out to double the national forest cover from 11 to 20-25%. Since then, public afforestation has been an important tool for delivering on policies in relation to public health, water quality, biodiversity and none the least CO2 neutrality ambitions. Today climate change is one of the dominant underlying policy drivers, funding mechanisms and design targets. Drawing from the approximately thirty (30) afforestation projects that the Danish Nature Agency is currently engaged in, the presentation will unfold how policies at national and municipal levels fuse into local, context-based periurban afforestation projects that match the scale of ongoing urban development.

PUBLIC AFFORESTATION IN DENMARK — Changing peri-urban landscapes into forest landscapes

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TIMOTHY BEATLEY — Professor, University of Virginia Executive Director, Biophilic Cities Network

Timothy is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for the last thirty years. Beatley is the author or co-author of more than fifteen books, including Green Urbanism (Island Press), Ethical Land Use (Island Press, 2014) and Blue Biophilic Cities: Nature and Resilience Along the Urban Coast (Palgrave, 2018). Tim directs the Biophilic Cities Project at UVA and is co-founder of UVA’s Centre for Design and Health, within the School of Architecture.

As the planet continues to rapidly urbanise, there is a growing sense that a new model of cities is needed: one that overcomes the physical (and mental) disconnect between humans and nature. The presentation will develop the belief that contact with nature is not something optional but absolutely essential for leading a happy, healthy and meaningful life. The presentation will review the many ways in which cities are already profoundly natureful and biodiverse and describe the emerging vision and practice of Biophilic Cities. Finally, the newly formed global Biophilic Cities Network and examples of innovative design and planning in cities will be presented.

BIOPHILIC CITIES —

Design & planning of cities that love nature

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LIESL VANAUTGAERDEN — Senior Expert Systems Thinking, Department of Environment and Spatial Development, Flemish Government

Liesl is Senior expert Systems Thinking at the Department of Environment and Spatial Development, Flemish Government. She has been responsible for the initiation / implementation of large-scale spatial development programs, both area-based (territorial development programs) and theme-oriented (de-sealing soil recovery and afforestation programs). Collaborative, cross-sector and interscalar strategies are key to her work for which she introduces researchby-design and landscape mapping techniques.

Liesl holds a master’s degree in Architecture and Civil Engineering ( , 2001) and a postgraduate qualification in Landscape Architecture (ETH Zurich, 2008).

The Flemish Government aims to create an additional 4,000 hectares of forests and woodlands within five years. This implies recultivating the practice of afforestation in Flanders as a shared project. Not only will the emergence of new forestry initiatives need to accelerate tenfold, but also these new forests should also perform a wider range of functions, from increasing mental and physical wellbeing to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Evidently, urban forests have become a critical piece in this endeavour. The presentation will explore the new actor coalitions and local and spatial agencies, the experimental tools and diversification of typologies that have been developed to make urban forestry more operational.

CO-CREATING URBAN FORESTS — A new practice

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NOTES —

POLICY SESSION I TRANSFORMATIVE GOVERNANCE & POLICIES

— Moderation: CECIL KONIJNENDIJK Francqui Chair 2022 MANUELA RONCI Broadening the Concept of ‘Urban Forest’ to Address Climate Change through Biodiversity Conservation.

VÍCTOR MUÑOZ SANZ Between Top-down and Bottom-up.

ALAN SIMSON The White Rose Community Forest.

SARANTIS GEORGIOU Performative Land Cover.

SARA FAVARGIOTTI & ANNA CODEMO The Leaf Plan Project.

Larger-scale urban forest and forest urbanism projects are implemented across the world, with transformative potential. This also requires novel governance approaches and a redefining of the urban forestry concept. A number of case studies / projects aim to promote different urban forest and green infrastructure benefits in attempts to break the status-quo.

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Broadening the Concept of ‘Urban Forest’ to Address Climate Change through Biodiversity Conservation.

(In Amsterdam) it’s more than just planting trees.

Manuela Ronci — Politecnico di Torino, Universita degli Studi di Torino systemic approach – ecological networks – sustainable development policies – urban resilience

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Awareness of the manifold benefits trees can bring to ameliorate the quality of human life in cities has now been acquired even outside the scientific community.

Many authorities worldwide have identified urban forestry as an antidote to environmental degradation. However, urban forestation seems to be often reduced to a mere slogan and scarcely exploited to its full potential to respond to various challenges. Notwithstanding the multiple advantages provided by vegetation, the compulsive ‘greening’ of cities is not necessarily effective per se and, if not properly planned and managed, can even be more costly than beneficial. Moreover, this approach is often based solely on utilitarian principles, revealing an anthropocentric attitude. Without a

deep understanding of the interdependence existing between humans and other-than-humans, the concept of ‘urban forest’ proves to be underexploited and somehow insufficient to tackle the growing criticalities affecting cities on a global scale.

Trees and other plants are a useful tool in the mitigation of intertwined environmental problems, such as climate emergency and biodiversity loss.

The strong relation between these two issues is not only expressed in the effects of climate change exacerbating habitat and species depletion. In fact, scholars agree that a high level of biological diversity improves the resilience of ecosystems and thus their ability to respond to climate change and extreme weather events. Understanding biodiversity conservation as an active agent rather than a mere outcome of climate risks mitigation, both emergencies can be addressed synergically. In order to design sustainable and resilient systems, a careful cooperation of policy-makers, multisectoral practitioners, and academics is needed to define coherent solutions, which consider ecological connections and dynamics from micro-biotopes to regional and national ecological networks.

In this respect, urban forestry can be truly effective if interpreted in a wider perspective, strategically embracing the broader concept of green infrastructure. By attentively calibrating the structural and botanical variety of the vegetation, the spatial configuration of the patches, and their connection within the urban fabric, suitable conditions can be created to concurrently host biodiversity and ensure the functioning of ecosystems capable of reacting to climate change effects.

Proposing the city of Amsterdam as a case study, the paper aims to underline how the design of an articulated network of multifunctional, multi-sized, varied green spaces can simultaneously respond to several, pressing challenges. Throughout its history, Amsterdam has based its own expansion on a robust ecological structure composed of vegetated patches varying in size and typology, which proved efficient in maintaining a good balance between

high building density and great liveability. So as to preserve and strengthen such a coherent system, contemporary urban development policies still follow this attitude, enriched with a novel ecological awareness and a new emphasis on multifunctionality.

Discussing several interconnected strategies and initiatives implemented over the last decade by the municipality of Amsterdam (in collaboration with citizens and private businesses), the paper intends to highlight the multiple possibilities of a systemic and holistic approach, which integrates urban forestry and green infrastructure to create healthy, biodiverse, and adaptive urban ecosystems.

– Between Top-down and Bottomup. A comparative study on organizational and governance models in a new generation of Urban Forests.

Víctor Muñoz Sanz (1), Tanja Herdt (1), Sara

related complexities in organizational dimensions.

Our aim is to gain insights into those aspects, and analyze their effectiveness and fitness for purpose.

We conducted qualitative analysis of multiple case studies of recent European projects: Madrid, Berlin, Almere and Marina Alta. An American case acts as a reference case for contrast and comparison. Results suggest that different types of forests also represent different governance and organisational models either rooted in established practices of forestry, city development or urban planning, each emphasizing a different mix of top-down and bottom-up strategies.

Our results suggest that depending on these organizational specificities, projects face distinct 19 — collaborative challenges. We conclude emphasis is needed in creating capacity for learning and adjustment of local governance frameworks.

Romero Muñoz (2), Lorena Bello Gómez (3), Teresa Sánchez Chaparro (2) — (1) Department of Urbanism, Delft University of Technology, (2) Innovation and Technology for Human Development Centre, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, (3) Department of Landscape Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design planning process – climate adaptation measures – governance models – organizational models – urban greening

– The White Rose Community Forest.

Helping to deliver a nature-positive green infrastructure and built environment in the Leeds City Region in the UK. Alan Simson —

In a new generation of tree-planting projects, principles from urban forestry are mainstreamed into urban planning towards achieving urban sustainability. This paper works on the hypothesis that urban forestry projects reflect certain context-

Landscape Architecture and Urban Forestry, Leeds Beckett University community forestry – nature-positive infrastructure – quality of life

It has been estimated that 40% of global GDP is currently generated from the built environment, thus making it of crucial importance to the global economy. Cities are often the engine of the modern economy, providing the density, interactions and networks that make societies more creative, productive,prosperous and healthy. However, the poorly planned and uncoordinated expansion of our towns and cities is not only economically inefficient, butimpacts significantly upon the biodiversity of adjacent areas, and on the health — 20 and wellbeing of the local population. Thus a move towards more nature-positive infrastructure design that is responsive to global warming is essential, and community / urban forestry has the potential to be the prime choreographer of achieving this.

For nearly thirty years, England’s Community Forests have been transforming the landscapes and communities in and around theirlargest towns and cities. The Community Forests, supported by partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors, and of course local communities themselves, have broughttrees and people together to create healthy, inspiring resilient places for humans and nature to live side by side. This presentation will focus specifically upon the work ofone of these Community Forests -the White Rose Community Forest (WRF), which is the largest community forest in Britainand a key component of the Northern Forest Project. The WRF covers an area in excess of 9000 km², and whilst the geography, partnerships and politics associated with the WRF will be discussed, the presentation will focus specifically on how the WRF has played and continues to play

a key role in the regeneration of the Leeds City Region.Leeds is the third largest city in Britain, lying at the centre of the fourth most populous urban area, with a population of 2.6 million. It has the greatest national diversity of any urban area outside London, having over 75 ethnic groups represented in the population, and positively embraces its diverse and rich heritage. That said, although the character of the city is diverse in appearance, density and use, the public realm has often lacked distinctivenessand viable urban treecover. As a consequence,the City Region embarked upon a programme to address the various challenges that it faced in creating healthy, liveableand economically rewarding places. It’s an ambitious programme that includes a significant input from the White Rose Community Forest,working with awidevariety of local authorities, supporters and communitiesto ensure that trees and woodlands are at the very heart of transforming their streets, public spaces, and highway infrastructureinto healthy, inspiring,resilient placesto be. As a result,Leeds City Region is already a substantially greener,betterconnected, innovative and adaptivecityregion, preparing for the impacts of climate change, and increasingly being recognisedasa unique place to be.

– Performative Land Cover. The water-sensitive performance of vegetation as the foundation of urbanization patterns.

Sarantis Georgiou — Sweco Belgium/TU Delft vegetation – water-sensitivityurbanlayout – landscapeecology – woodland – hydrology

It is becoming common in urbanism that ‘nature’ be

infrastructural mosaic that restores its watersensitive capacity. The emphasis on how spatial morphology affects ecological processes (and viceversa) is put forward in this work as exemplifying the need to re-think and transform spatial planning typologies and paradigms. Here, this is addressed from the perspective of, primarily, pluvial flooding and the management of urban rain-/stormwater (extending to fluvial and coastal/tidal flooding).

engineered as landscape infrastructure to address the exposure of urbanized landscapes to risk from flood-related hazards. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in agro-forestry and hydrology: the properties of vegetative cover in regulating water flows and delineating the performance of hydrological cycles and water-related events, is behind an increase in interest in the regeneration of natural forest and woodland land cover, surface/ subsurface hydrological systems, and silvipastural and sustainable agroforestry practices.

However, the link that landscape infrastructural performativity establishes between land- use/landcover composition/configuration and ecosystem service provision (here: water regulation), is neglected in current approaches to water-sensitive planning, design and engineering. Retrofitting/ embedding surface hydrographic/hydrological systems and agents of exposure to risks from waterrelated hazards within urbanized landscapes, is tackled, solely, through the design and deployment of ‘green-blue’ soft-engineering devices/measures (individually or in a networked character).

Contrary to such approaches, this study elaborates on an act of performative ‘greening’ of the entire urbanized landscape: how its overall architecture (pattern) can be informed by the particularities of water-sensitivity (process). Instead of appropriating the ‘void’, this research proposes the infusion of urbanized landscapes with ecological density, such that the gradient of hybrid open/built-up space and vegetation patterns acts as a landscape

What is being sought, therefore, is an alignment between the urban layout, the water- sensitive conditions of the landscape surface/subsurface, and the composition and configuration of vegetation.

This is accomplished through the mapping of the above relationship (the horizontal allocation of land-use/land-cover patterns and the vertical distribution of water infiltration, channelization and accommodation conditions) and its translation into patterns of vegetative land-cover (use intensity, use diversity, cover intensity, cover diversity and spatial organization). Through the employment of geospatial modelling and a multi-variate approach, 21 — this research develops morphologies of vegetated land and organizations of vegetative patterns, on the basis of the quantification of their water-sensitive potential. As such, spatial planning is approached as the vehicle through which to optimize the hybridity of constructed built-vegetated landscapes and their performance in addressing flood risk.

The result is an alternative landscape ecological image, that is, an alternative mosaic of green patterns (from intense, diverse and monofunctional forest to combined woodland- cropland/pasture covers). These are organized according to specific principles, furthering the importance of the spatialization of the quantification of vegetative mitigative and adaptive capacity in planning, design and engineering disciplines. The use of ecological density in addressing water-sensitivity exemplifies a transformative framework for urbanization, where the ecological performance of vegetation patterns is the foundation for the structuring of contemporary territorial, regional and urban figures.

The Leaf Plan Project. Trento beyond incrementalism.

Mosè Ricci, Sara Favargiotti, Anna Codemo, Silvia Mannocci — University of Trento, Department of Civil Environmental and Mechanical Engineering collaborative urban planning – ecological transition – robustness – adaptive and incremental urban plan – climate sensitive design

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The current social, economic and environmental challenges are driving cities towards unsure and unstable scenarios, and they constitute an acceleration of urban transformations and of the adoption of resilient agendas. This entails an update of urban planning tools, which need to mirror the complexity of urban patterns and to enhance their capacities to focus on multiple pathways and plurality of goals. Designing transitions – energetic, ecological, digital –, through technological innovation and sharing, means designing with awareness and renewed ecological and cultural responsibility, as stated in the Italian recovery and resilience plan (PNRR). This approach requires that no significant harm (DNSH) should be done to the

environment for the implementation of the proposed reforms and investment projects. Moreover, the recent G20 in Rome and Cop26 in Glasgow called for the plantation of 1 trillion trees by 2030 and the protection of existing forestry.

Considering this framework, the research conducted by the Trento Urban Transformation (TUT) research group at the University of Trento has been addressing urban transition and sustainable development in Trento, an Alpine town in the north of Italy.

Trento is considered a role model in Italy in terms of sustainability and quality of life. Thus, the city is an ideal context to experiment innovative practices to tackle the current urban challenges. The TUT research project constitutes the scientific support to update the urban planning tools, and proposes a systematic approach to territorial governance based on resilience and adaptability. The research group is multidisciplinary, composed of experts in urban planning, architecture, landscape planning and environmental engineering, and the approach of the project relies on shared knowledge and cooperation between the researchers, the Municipality and the practitioners.

The proposed methodology offers an adaptive and incremental tool to develop a green and climateresilient city. Being based on three main pillars – narration, performance, shared action – it aims to provide a guideline to coordinate the city’s development with future challenges. The city plan draws on the vision of the city, namely “Trento Leaf Plan” (Figure 1), which has an important communicative role by clearly setting out the ecological transition on future development and defines strategies to combine the vision with the urban challenges.

The paper reports the operational outcome of the research, which consists of a process that can be integrated to the current legislation, as a first step to rethink planning tools in a resilient way. The proposed approach supports actions towards urban ecological transition and rethinks the land management devices, enabling a resilient regeneration of the city.

Specifically, it introduces the evaluation of urban practices, based on their ecological performance (e.g. sustainable water management, cooling, biodiversity protection, carbon sequestration), to facilitate climate-sensitive design and to increase ecosystem services in the built environment by using for example trees, forests and green areas.

The main aim of the proposed framework is to define and set required performances and their measurements (i.e. standards, indices) to allow flexibility and adaptability in the design solutions of the urban system

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NOTES —

POLICY SESSION II INNOVATIVE URBAN FOREST DESIGNS & DIALOGUES

— Moderation: CAROLINE VINCKE Earth and Life Institute, UCLouvain ALINA DELGADO Urban Forestry Life And Forest Urbanism Death in the Metropolitan Area of Guayaquil.

LUIS PIMENTEL Urban Forestry Planning for Health and Other Ecosystem Services.

MADDALENA SCALERA Urban Forest Policies Across Scales.

NOVIANTARI Perhutana Initiative, the Governance Innovation Towards a Strong Customary Forestry for Sustainable Jatiwangi, Indonesia.

SHEEBA AMIR Taking and Making of a Forest.

The constant demand for urban development often implies the degradation of natural ecosystems, with high economic, social and environmental costs. Through the lenses of multi-scales and comparative analysis of different (peri-)urban patterns, local case studies presented in the session support long-term, high-quality urbanforest design, connected to “green” goal strategies. These initiatives foster innovative networks of community and public dialogue, and reconsideration of historical land-use classification.

RAZVAN ANDREI VASIU Landscape Architecture Competition for Urban Wetland and Forest.

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Urban Forestry Life and Forest Urbanism Death in the Metropolitan Area of Guayaquil. A multi-scalar and comparative analysis.

Alina Delgado, Lorena Vasco — Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, University of Guayaquil vulnerability risk – climate change – urban patterns – land management instruments – Guayaquil

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In the current global climate change condition, nations around the world and in the Latin American Region face the challenge of accommodating new urban populations and at the same time trying to reduce contamination rates. Ecuador, particularly the city of Guayaquil, is no exception to the above. It is a city that historically has suffered a continuous degradation of its natural ecosystems, such as the dry tropical forest and the mangrove, by a constant demand for new urban developments that have extended and fragmented the city with a high economic, social and environmental cost. For example, a main planned road that will connect the city with the new airport will go through a protected natural area without consistent and participatory

ways to diminish the environment’s high impact.

In addition, there are plans for new social housing projects in the city’s periphery, without considering policies for including these in the existing numerous urban voids of the city centre.

Moreover, Guayaquil is one of the cities with the highest environmental vulnerability risk, listed fourth in the global vulnerability ranking of CAF 2018. At the neighbourhood level, streets and public spaces do not include vegetation that could maintain and raise the inhabitant’s physical and mental health. Street flooding and a high impact of diseases due to low sanitary conditions and public health care, as occurred in the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020, are some effects.

This study performs a multi-scalar and comparative analysis of different urban patterns at the neighbourhood, urban fragment, and city levels.

Additionally, the research depicts the potential of land value instruments for promoting and securing land with environmental and social objectives.

Results indicate the interplay between forest urbanism and urban forestry life and the relation with residents’ well-being at the neighbourhood level and sustainable development city needs. The study concludes with a critical reflection regarding the possibilities or restrictions of the selected approach to increase the benefits of urban forestryforest urbanism and the use of integrative policies for protecting forests in the metropolitan area of Guayaquil.

– Urban Forestry Planning for Health and Other Ecosystem Services. The case of Prato.

Francesco Fennini, Martina Maria Taroni, Maria Chiara Pastore, Luis Pimentel — Politecnico di Milano

Forestry –Health and Wellbeing – Ecosystem Services – Climate change – NBS

of transformation within the city, to later compare/ overlap the spatial data regarding the critical issues with the real, and ongoing, urban projects.

After having established a system of values and benefits that underlined the important role that biodiversity, accessibility to open green areas, exposure to nature, and equity, the research established a matrix of priorities to classify all future interventions, later to be intertwined with the areas identified in the previous phase. Thus, identifying pilot areas that belong to a specific thematic category.

The research, carried out by the Milan Polytechnic and the University of Florence, aimed at defining forestation strategies related to the improvement of human health, plant and fauna biodiversity, and resilience, in support of the urban forestry plan and the new structural plan of the municipality of Prato in the region of Tuscany, Italy.

Starting from research carried out by the “IBE-CNR” (Institute of Bioeconomy of the National Research Council), the team developed multi-scalar analyses supported by GIS and produced maps related to the state of the art of green areas within the municipal boundaries. Aspects such as the accessibility and exposure to natural areas, tree canopy cover, hotspots, and cold-spots areas, and the state of urban forests and greenery on a neighborhood scale were explored, while being supported by a literature review showing how the presence of greenery, with different typologies, have positive health outcomes in humans.

Following this phase of recognition and scientific validation, a critical assessment of the natural capital was conducted, to bring out the strengths to be exploited and the critical issues on which to intervene. The data that emerged from this comparison made it possible to understand the presence of critical areas regarding also the health and well-being of citizens. A process of dialogue with the municipality served to refine the current areas

At last, guidelines were drawn up for planning purposes, useful for the municipal administration to coordinate all future forestry projects in the city, accompanied by both diagrams regarding the main design solutions and types of plants, as well as practical botanical sheets, to identify better the tree and shrub species that can be used within the pedoclimatic and landscape context of the municipality of Prato. The main intent of this work is to use the green (in the broad sense), in the places where citizens live, work and spend their free time in 27 — addition to playing the role of ecosystem regulatory service, such as mitigation of extreme events, water purification, erosion control, microclimate regulation, can also be a cultural ecosystem service particularly linked to the improvement of physical and mental health.

– Urban Forest Policies Across Scales. The Italian and Apulian issues.

Maddalena Scalera, Mariella Annese — Civil Engineering and Architecture Department, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy transitional landscape – territory – policymaking – forest urbanism – multi-scale strategy

four other so called ‘territorial projects’ for the Apulia Region. A single intervention strategy thus becomes part of a larger regional plan that holds together place-based priorities and goals.

In Italy, the sizeable spending program of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) seeks to respond to the environmental challenges of the contemporary city through ‘Urban and Periurban Forestation Plans,’ because these are considered the most effective and rapid effect tools against climate change. Despite admirable intensions, the Mission 2 ‘Green Revolution and Ecological Transition’, which grew out of the European Green Deal, lacks a stated national plan on urban forestry policy. The ways in which these resources can be used and the projects to be set, require a careful reflection on the effects of — 28 these policies on the Italian landscape.

The proposed contribution aims to reflect on an example of good-practice, i.e., the Regional Landscape Plan of Apulia (RLP), and the ways in which the Plan forests forest urbanism on a multiscale strategic landscape plan.

This regional regulatory instrument is characterized by a long-term vision for the periurban landscape, dedicated to the enhancement of the agricultural landscape structuring the regional territory. The Plan designates vast areas of urban forestation [fig.1], called ‘CO2 Parks’, in underutilized or abandoned manufacturing areas, to be realized for the purpose of ‘environmental compensation’. These new forest areas cross administrative and obvious physical borders to operate a region-wide tree planting and afforestation strategy. Therefore, these new urban forests are not only limited to the periurban areas of the two coastal cities (Brindisi and Taranto), but they extend to the countryside, becoming part of a larger strategic design of the region that includes

The reflection will be built around two questions.

The first: what is the risk that the NRRP – as multibillion project – becomes trivial and does not have tangible consequences on territories? The second: is the Regional Landscape Plan a useful policy tool for connecting local, high quality urban-forest design with national ‘green’ goals?

Through the presentation of one of the ‘territorial projects’ of the RLP of Apulia, the authors will discuss the opportunities offered by RLP in terms of a multi-scale policy vision of urban forestry. Thus, it constitutes an important opportunity to turn public policy objectives into strategy and design.

Beginning with these reflections, the contribution highlights how ‘forestry collaboration’ – the conditions of multiscalar actions (national, regional and local) – would allow, first of all, to have a proper territorial coverage of economic resources, using very substantial spending plans with imminent deadlines. Not to waste existing NRRP resources is imperative. Using them in the right way is the city planner’s goal.

– Perhutana Initiative, Governance Innovation Towards a Strong Customary Forestry for Sustainable Jatiwangi, Indonesia.

Tasya Taranusyura, Ramalis Sobandi, Ginggi Hasyim, Noviantari — Tunas Nusa Foundation, Jatiwangi Art Factory urbanization – cultural – community – forest

Perusahaan Hutan Tanaraya (Perhutana) is an initiative by the community of Jatiwangi in Majalengka regency named Jatiwangi Art Factory (JAF) to build a customary urban forest named Tanaraya Forest. This initiative is a reaction to the regency’s loss of forestry because of the fast urbanization, stimulated by the aggressive infrastructure development of the central government and the industrial sector investment surrounding Majalengka district, Indonesia. The function of the future Tanaraya Forest are to conserve and revitalize the natural ecosystem and open equity of Jatiwangi. Different from the regular customary forest which receives and conserves an existing customary forest by a local-traditional community, Perhutana chose to build a network of community at the local level, regional and global, using new methods and technology including differentiating people/organization involved in the processes. The forest will be consisted of several layers of local vegetation. The first is at the center, a conservation area of the forest that does not open to public. The second layer is the semi-productive forest, combining the conservation plants with some local productive trees. The third layer is productive forest, combining the conservation plants, fruit trees, scrub, bushes including herbal and agricultural plants needed to support the locals’ food security to support to the livelihood of the local community. The locals could improve and alter some of their houses as homestays to welcome guests at Perhutana’s event. Gradually the process will develop community-based tourism in parallel with growing the customary forest and give the participants the opportunity to experience

the real-life values of Jatiwangi. The important note is the participants are prohibited to do anything outside of the local values. The detail of physical, functional, and governance design will be discussed through an international design competition of Tanaraya Forest that will be announced in 2022.

Different from the regular customary forest which receives and conserves an existing customary forest by a local-traditional community, Perhutana chose to build a network of community at the local level, regional and global. The initiative also set the action to grow the forest as a communal action, inviting different actors for different purposes. Perhutana’s stakeholders consisted of three layers; community leaders, professional, and land owners. This paper is an analytical dialogue note regarding the governance and the communities’ set up of Perhutana between JAF, represented by Ginggi, and Pilar Tunas Nusa Lestari Foundation, an NGO that is a member of the community leaders stakeholders of Perhutana.

Using the participatory method, this paper becomes the preparation for public dialogue to discuss the innovation of governance, physical, and functional 29 — design of the forest. Analytical framework will be based on the theory of good governance and policy initiative for local control of the forest management with interdisciplinary collaboration towards resilient urban forests.

– Taking and Making of a Forest.

Spatial classification and socioecological transformation of Aravalli Hills.

Sheeba Amir — OSA, International Center of Urbanism, KU Leuven wasteland – urban forest – peri-urban landscape

The paper argues that ‘wasteland’ as a colonial landuse classification assigned to the Aravalli Hills and its forest system in peri-urban Delhi and Gurgaon, dilutes their socio-ecological contributions in the regional landscape. The land-use has become a tool to divert these ‘wastelands’ to ecologically insensitive ‘productive’ uses. The paper studies three periods of socio-ecological transformations to capture changing perspectives and relations of communities and Governing authorities through various land management policies and episodes of deforestation and afforestation. The northernmost — 30 part of the Aravalli Hills is spread across Delhi, Gurgaon, and Faridabad and play a significant role in the ecology of the region. Historically, the hills and their forest system were part of village common property resources (commons), used as grazing lands and preserved woodlots usually referred to as ‘sacred groves’. Villagers, especially poor and marginal communities since historical times continue to depend on these forests for their sustenance and livelihood. Through self-governance, village institutions were responsible for maintaining equity in rights, assets and liabilities associated with common lands and other natural resources.

Conversely, colonial land management, driven by theories of physiocracy and land materiality, emphasised on individual land ownership and extension of cultivation over common lands through the various land-use policies. The utilitarian simplification of land into ‘cultivable’ and ‘waste’ (uncultivable), imposed by British rulers had profound implications on the socio-ecological aspects of the territory including the Aravalli forest.

Later British period focussed on a ‘preservation’ oriented approach towards the forest by converting them into ‘reserved forests’ under the state, further alienating the local communities from their land. Post-independence, the Indian government extended state control on common lands and replaced the customary systems in use by local communities. Many of these common lands, which were once community forests, were turned into city parks with growing urbanization. Aravalli Hills and its forest system in peri-urban Gurgaon retain ambiguous legal land titles inherited from colonial and post-colonial land classification systems. Part of the hills are still classified as ‘wasteland’ and are under heightened threat of mining, urbanization and conversion into urban services like city waste disposal sites and solar parks for ‘green’ energy production.

This study is relevant within an interdisciplinary approach to studying urban environments, engaging the lenses of social science and environmental science. The paper contributes toward building knowledge and recognition of socio-ecological values of ‘wastelands’ in India.

– Landscape Architecture Competition for Urban Wetland and Forest. Assessing the drafting of the design brief and evaluating the foreseen impact of the winning proposal.

Razvan Andrei Vasiu — University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj-Napoca urban wetland – urban biotope – spontaneous forest

The Cluj-Napoca region is one of the most rapidly urbanizing areas of Romania and like many other cities of its size, there is a stiff competition between green spaces and residential or commercial development. Fast pacedprivate development has taken over almost all free spaces left unbuilt after the fall of the communist regime.

One such pieceof land, left undeveloped for the last 30 years-moslty beacuse of its marshy character -is a unique site within the urban fabric of Cluj-Napoca.

The site that will be referred to as the East Park has a total areaof 45.5 ha. This includes the water surface and the shores of a large semi-natural lake, a flat and compact area that served as a tree nursery, and an extensive wetland. The opportunity to use this area as a public green space has been signalled since the 60’s and 70’s, when several projects were proposed to capitalize on the water surfaces present and transform a swampy site into a recreational area. The projects did not materialize, instead a tree nursery was establishedin the beginning of 90’s on dry and flat portion of the site. After a short period, the nursery went bankrupt, but the trees remained on a surface of approximately 10-15 ha. Being abandoned turned out to be a very good thing for the site as the trees in the nursery developed into a forest – with new patches of spontaneous young native trees and shrubs emergingeverywhereon the site and the wetland extended both in size and complexity as an ecosystem-canals feeding water to marshes, swamps, wet and dry meadows, riparian forest corridors, tree clumps and tiny forests and finally to a chain of two smaller natural lakes.This biodiveristy hotspot is now home to unique migratory birds seen nowhere else in the region, a large population

of bats, butterlfies and many other species. East park was planned to be transformed into a conventional commercial development, but vocal public discontent and civic initiative groups have persuaded the local authorities to organise a design competition instead. The design requirements set out by the competition brief revolve around three key concepts: i)protection of the existing wild habitat –nature for the sake of nature; ii) a bufferarea around it thatmust separate without isolating and must protect without excluding –nature for the sake of protecting nature; iii) a public park for conventional use –nature for the sake of humans.The competition resulted in a wining proposal that takes the spirit of the breif further than all other designs.

The open water and wetland from the protected biotope are extended to create an accessible buffer space, where park visitors can enjoy the wildlife without disturbing the sensitive fauna.The existing river is provided with new meanders, a wider riverbed, and an expansion of the associated forest gallery. This coupled with the planned expansion of the wetlands toward the park spaces are all 31 — beneficial for the characteristic biodiversity.

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POLICY SESSION III URBAN & FOREST CONTESTATIONS: EQUITY & EFFICIENCY TENSIONS

— Moderation: BRUNO DE MEULDER Department of Architecture, KULeuven ZEBA AMIR Contested Forests.

ALEJANDRA PARRA-ORTIZ A Governance Approach to Reduce the Unequal Distribution of Urban Green Infrastructure in Barranquilla, Colombia.

JULIA SMACHYLO Legible Landscapes.

PAULA MEIJERINK Trees for All People.

KAMNI GILL Visible and Invisible Forests.

JERYLEE WILKES-ALLEMANN

The session will unravel various ways in which urban forestry and forest urbanism practices often presume forms of reciprocity and complementarity.

They imply (for example) the attenuation of inequality in the urban system by forestry. Unfortunately, urban inequality is too often mirrored or reinforced by the urban forest structure. Community involvement in urban forestry programs is crucial for increasing their efficiency, but also a critical factor for more equity.

Envisioning the Future.

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Contested Forests. Van gujjar’s struggle to settle with forest in Uttarakhand.

Zeba Amir — OSA, International Center of Urbanism, KU Leuven Van Gujjars – himalaya – forestry regimes – forest urbanism – climate change

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Beginning with the colonial institutionalisation of forests in the late 19th century, forest policies and regulatory frameworks in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand have continued to impact communities and their settlement systems. In the case of the semi-nomadic pastoralist tribe of Van Gujjars of Garhwal, extensive regulations of forest use and access have coerced them into sedentarism.

The paper will examine this change as instigated by state territorialization as well as civil resistance.

The paper will explore how through contestation and adaptation of the state’s forest policies, Van Gujjars are engaged in production of new forms of forest-based settlements and transformation of the Himalayan landscape.

The paper will first elaborate on the traditional settlement system of ‘khols’ to allow for a better understanding of Van Gujjars’ relationship with

the forest. The paper will analyse their forest-based knowledges and practices of transhumance in order to discern the processes of domestication (of nature) vs. de-regularization (of civilization).

Secondly the paper will analyse how these traditional practices have transformed under the state’s development agenda rooted in economic utility or naturalization of forests. While revenue based colonial policies made it difficult to practice transhumance, the modern environmental aspirations of the post-colonial Indian state made it impossible. With the formation of national parks in the late 20th century, Van Gujjars were evicted from their forest ‘deras’ and subjected to agrarian schemes of resettlement. From the vast and intricate expanse of the khols, each household was now to be contained within one hectare of agricultural plot and a cement house. Although Van Gujjars eventually took up agrarian practices under increasing socioeconomic and political pressures, the resettlement colonies have failed to become the sites of their adapted operations. The Van Gujjars continue to return to their deras and assert their rights to forest use and access. The paper will study the transformation of the originally seasonal pastoralist deras into permanent agrarian settlements, in order to discuss the socio-cultural inadequacies of the resettlement schemes and the imperviousness of top-down planning to local practices against the adaptive capacities of small-scale site-based systems.

In the context of increasing recognition of traditional ecological knowledges towards mitigating contemporary climate change challenges, these transformations seemingly present an opportunity to reiterate and reinvent the forest and settlement relationships of the Himalaya. However, these transformations are climate sensitive and simultaneously impacted by changing ecologies and availability of forest resources. In this regard, the paper will lastly discuss how Van Gujjar’s needs and capacities for forest-based production and transformation of space can benefit from state’s sustainable development agenda and vice-versa.

A Governance Approach to Reduce the Unequal Distribution of Urban Green Infrastructure in Barranquilla, Colombia Through a Participatory Tree Planting Program.

Alejandra Parra-Ortiz, Gina Serrano-Aragundi — University of Montreal, EPA Barranquilla Verde urban tree canopy cover – green infrastructure – citizen engagement – i-Tree Canopy – social inequity

the south part of the city have lower tree canopy cover and scarce space for planting trees. Following this, a public planting program was designed and implemented to focus resources on these areas of Barranquilla. The program counts with a participatory process involving the local community to select the tree species and look for planting areas within their homes, schools and other shared spaces.

Tree species availability has been considered to enhance urban biodiversity, provide habitat for local fauna, and increase food security. The program was launched in mid-2021 and has been implemented in seven neighbourhoods. Early results show 70% of plant establishment success. A deeper work with the community needs to be done to understand the different factors that prevent them from having more canopy tree cover over their properties and make tree ownership more appealing for homeowners.

– Legible Landscapes. Incentivizing forest knowledge and action in Southern Ontario.

Julia Smachylo — Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Connecticut

Urban forest, considered a key part of the green infrastructure in cities, has proven to increase the quality of life in urban areas due to the wide range of its ecosystem services. However, the uneven distribution of green resources in terms of quality and quantity erodes the potentiality of the urban forest as a source of multiple benefits.

Using the i-Tree Canopy tool, the urban forest of Barranquilla, Colombia, was assessed to understand the variance throughout the city grid and to identify neighbourhoods with lower tree canopy cover. The results show that low-income neighbourhoods in

state spatial strategies – environmental governance – forest stewardship – collective action

The design of policy and reporting standards produce frameworks that render forested landscapes visible. Using the theoretical lens of state legibility, this paper traces the changing dynamics of forest management on privately owned lands across the urban transect of southern Ontario, with a focus on provincial incentive programs that have created new ways of seeing and engaging with woodland systems. Tied to neoliberal shifts in environmental

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governance, the Managed Forest Tax Incentive Program (MFTIP) and its corresponding Managed Forest Plan are assessed as a means through which to mobilize a diversified field of knowledge and action with the potential to enable climate conscious stewardship practices in this region.

tiered, collaborative, and legislative efforts between civic, municipal, and private partners must be undertaken to fast-track canopy cover improvement and to increase equity.

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– Trees for All People. Forest case study with the underprivileged Columbus Southside.

Paula Meijerink — Knowlton School, The Ohio State University social justice – canopy cover – forest prototypes – community building

Racial injustices are compounded by climate change. Implementing green infrastructures and tree strategies in underserved neighborhoods must be a primary mission of urban communities.

Fundamental to this mission is the forging of transformative connections in public and private realms at any scale. The design of detailed and flexible processes custom-tailored to community needs are vital to successful implementations. Multi-

Trees for All People examines the disparity in urban tree canopy based on race, income and education that exists in major cities in the American Midwest and develops methods of creating tree canopy and urban forests, that can help rectify this problem. It includes a collaborative, multi-year tree planting initiative in Columbus’ Southside, an underprivileged neighborhood south of downtown.

Its objective is to improve the lives of the Southside residents and augment its canopy cover for purposes of climate action and ecological function. As research, this project develops equitable and social processes custom -tailored to this community and aimed at public advocacy, stakeholder engagement and long-term tree care, -that can be replicated in neighborhoods with comparable social-ecological concerns in the Midwest and elsewhere.

The canopy cover of Columbus, OH, ranges from 9% in hardscaped, lower income, and black neighborhoods to 41% in white, wealthier, and higher educated communities. This discrepancy is consistent with the largest cities in the Midwest: Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis and Milwaukee. The Columbus Urban Forestry Masterplan, approved by city leadership in 2021, has a mission to increase canopy cover statewide to 40%. Trees for All People works with the underprivileged Southside community in Columbus to achieve this.

Under the leadership of Trees for All People at The Ohio State University and in collaboration with the United Methodist Church for All People, the nonprofit organization Green Columbus, and the City of Columbus Recreation and Parks Department, a new tree planting strategy called MyTree is developed aimed at improving canopy cover in and with the Southside community. The MyTree shade tree planting strategy focuses on private right-ofway spaces to improve street livability. This paper outlines the context and processes by which this strategy is implemented, and records the assets and impediments to planting.

– Visible and Invisible Forests. The culture of shade in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Kamni Gill — University of Manitoba, Canada urbanism – trees – nature|culture – postcolonialism – archetypes – forest

Trees are a particularly powerful medium of urban design. Trees defines cities within a regional territory, but also at the scale of person moving through blocks, streets and corners. Cities are constituted by the visible forest: the species, spacing and structure of trees and a range of measurable processes. They are also constituted by the invisible forest, culturally laden, suggestive of different functions and modes of occupation to different people at different times. The invisible forest is the forest recalled, overlooked, unseen or not so easily perceived. It may be manifest as an absence of trees that exposes social inequities; as zones of spontaneous vegetation species that are accorded no official value; or through the unconventional uses of trees/woodlands by particular groups. I propose

two approaches to urban trees to enrich climate related tree planting initiatives that synthesize visible and invisible dimensions of the urban forest: prioritizing the collective spatial experience of trees in planting efforts and actively recognizing trees as a cultural necessity. I examine these two aspects of tree cultivation through local fieldwork and design 37 — scenarios from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

The City of Winnipeg Urban Forestry Branch recently released the State of the Forest report (2021). Through an i-tree analysis, it identifies a range of climate related threats to the urban tree canopy and itemizes the ecosystem benefits that the current urban tree canopy provides. It quantifies how the current canopy contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation through parameters like leaf area density or carbon storage.

The report establishes the urban tree canopy establishes a baseline for expansion and care of the urban tree canopy. The planting of new trees valorizes the traditional placement of individual trees along streets or in parks and coincides with an understanding of trees as nature in the city.

Focusing on the collective, spatial planting of trees rather than individual specimens increases the visibility of tree planting initiatives and community engagement in climate change planting efforts.

Adapting sylvan archetypes – drawn from traditional

forms of tree cultivation in agriculture, forestry and horticulture-– to the physical and cultural conditions of Winnipeg acknowledges the intricate spatial poetics of trees through their distinctive configurations in urban contexts over time. Making tree planting types rather than individual trees a significant component in a recombinant urban tree infrastructure strengthens spatial quality with associated impacts on urban cooling; it configures the city and its trees as an entwined green infrastructure that can be designed and experienced in diverse ways by diverse people.

Recognizing trees as a cultural necessity further increases the range of sites, tree functions and planting techniques that might be considered for climate-related tree planting initiatives. Such a recognition could be a means of acknowledging the relationship between local trees and Indigenous groups who comprise 11% of the Winnipeg’s population or of reconfiguring the view of urban trees as expendable and ornamental to sentient and productive. Making the urban forest an agent of — 38 culture as well as of ecosystem services can redefine how we live under the urban canopy of the in an era of rapid climate change.

Sciences Forest Science, (2) Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department of Urbanism, Research Fellowship Urban Forestry, (3) Pan Bern AG, (4) University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy, (5) University of Belgrade - Faculty of Forestry, Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture, (6) Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, (7) Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), (8) European Forest Institute, Forest Policy Research Network, (9) University of Freiburg, Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, Chair for Societal Transition and Circular Economy, (10) Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Department of Environmental Politics, (11) University of Jena, Chair of Environmental Politics forest urbanism – urban planning – biocities

– Envisioning the Future. Creating sustainable, healthy and resilient Biocities.

Jerylee Wilkes-Allemann (1), Rene van der Velde (2), Andreas Bernasconi (3), Elisabeth Karaca (4), Evelyn Coleman Brantschen (1), Slavica Cepic (5), Jelena Tomicevic-Dubljevic (5), Nicole Bauer (6), Anna Petit-Boix (9), Jessica Cueva (7), Ivana, Živojinović (5/8), Sina Leipold (10/11), Somidh Saha (7), Mira Kopp (9) — (1) Bern University of Applied Sciences, School of Agricultural, Forest and Food

Numerous challenges – from population increase to climate change – threaten the sustainable development of cities and calls for a fundamental change of urban development and green-blue resource management. Urban forests are vital in

this transition, as they provide various ecosystem services and allow to re-shape and re-think cities.

To design greener, cooler, more inclusive and resilient cities, requiring inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration on transformative ways of urban engagement and functioning. Based on a Europewide community effort with diverse experts, we propose five key research fields to unlock the desired paradigm change: circular bioeconomy, climate resilience, governance, social and human environment, and biodiversity. We summarise main research paths for each fields and the crosscutting knowledge areas that can help to address the challenges faced (e.g. modelling and assessment of the urban microclimate). For transforming cities further knowledge is needed on e.g. urban innovation, transition, participation, and more Finally, we address how the identified research gaps can implemented (e.g. international coordinated research effort, interdisciplinary networks).

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NOTES —

POLICY SESSION IV FROM URBAN FOREST STRATEGIES TO OPERATIONALIZATION

— Moderation: KRISTEL MAZY Faculty of Architecture & Urbanism, UMONS BRENT GREENE & WENDY WALLS Wood for the Trees.

SOFIA PAOLI Evaluation of Training Needs on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Among EU Urban Forestry Actors and Students for the Development of the UForest Training Programme.

GERT DE KEYSER How Can a Traditional Regional Nature Conservation Agency Foster Inclusive Forest Urbanism.

RENÉ VAN DER VELDE Cool Tree Architecture.

KARMEN HOGE Defining the Peri-urban Forest.

The transition from urban forest strategies to their operationalization raises many concrete issues. The session will offer contributions that focus on process (in particular on an openness to interdisciplinarity), diverse measurement and planning tools and the training of new professionals. It will also discuss choices of materialization, from forest urbanism architectural typologies to building materials.

COLTRANE MCDOWELL Dirty Playgrounds.

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Wood for the Trees. The role of policy in shaping forest urbanism in Berlin and Melbourne.

Brent Greene, Wendy Walls — Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), The University of Melbourne forest urbanism – landscape architecture – climate change – landscape policy – designed ecology

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This paper compares the role of government policy in influencing landscape and urban design approaches towards urban forests in Berlin (Germany) and Melbourne (Australia). Both cities have established urban forest strategies that link to ecological and environmental sciences and respond to climate challenges such as urban heat, adaptation, and resilience. While each city offers an example of strategic forest urbanism, the uptake and application of ecological knowledge through design are distinct due to divergent cultural and political agendas. With the benefit of hindsight, this paper explores the impact of significant environmental and political events in shaping new urban forest policy and designs in each context.

In West Berlin, the Berlin Wall’s construction forced ecologists to study novel urban forests as traditional research sites within the German Democratic Republic were inaccessible up to 1989.

Scientists discovered high levels of biodiversity within these emergent forests, which impacted new environmental policies valuing ecological

processes and biodiversity over a design’s aesthetic performance. This scenario transformed Berlin’s landscape architectural practises and led to ecologically celebrated designs such as Nature Park Schöneberger Südgelände. Comparably, Melbourne’s Urban Forest Strategy (2012) emerged after devastating environmental events, including the Millennium drought (2000 - 2010) and extreme heat waves and bushfires. The initial policy was developed by utilising scientific data that substantiated the potential benefits of urban trees in straightforward economic terms, thereby prioritising aesthetic and economic considerations over ecological function. Although this policy has led to substantial tree coverage across Melbourne, there are few examples of novel forest urbanism tactics in design projects such as Birrarung Marr, which are instead recognised for their visual impact and economic function.

Looking forward, we speculate that lessons on the production of policy in Berlin can offer Melbourne a novel framework to envision more robust engagement with forest urbanism in design, balancing the city’s ecological and social performances in a rapidly shifting climate.

– Evaluation of Training Needs on Entrepreneurship and Innovation Among EU Urban Forestry Actors and Students for the Development of the UForest Training Programme.

Colm O’Driscoll (1), Corina Basnou (2), Ilaria Doimo (1), Maria Chiara Pastore (3), Sofia Paoli (3) — (1) Etifor|Valuing nature, spin-off of the University of Padova, Padova (Italy), (2) Ecological and Forestry Applications Research

Center CREAF, Cerdanyola del Vallès (Spain), (3) Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Milan (Italy) training needs – urban forestry – innovation – entrepreneurship – nature-based solutions

Research has shown the need for interdisciplinary approaches to developing effective and sustainable urban forestry Nature-based Solutions (NbS).

Innovation and entrepreneurship capacity and skills can help urban forestry actors bridge these disciplines and facilitate the identification and development of, while capitalizing on, urban forestry NbS opportunities identified in urban areas. The level and access to innovation and entrepreneurship capacity and skills of urban forestry actors and university students are still relatively unknown.

This manuscript provides an overview of the existing demand on training needs that promote innovation and entrepreneurship in urban forestry and the delivery of associated NbS. The survey took place online between 01/06/2021 and 30/06/2021. The survey targeted university students - undergraduates and graduates, as well as Ph.D. students - professionals and citizens from European countries and other continents. About 246 valid questionnaires were filled out by respondents of 27 different nationalities (European and nonEuropean).

Main findings show that urban forests are agreed as NbS that offer a major chance for innovation where more than half of the respondents consider NbS a key topic in their professional career, despite the fact that more than half of respondents were not so familiar with the concept of urban forestry.

The results identified a high demand for developing skills related to economics (leadership and management, business modelling, financial planning, entrepreneurship), social aspects (cooperative leadership, societal impact, social business), and communication and information technologies (storytelling, cutting-edge

technologies, IT, marketing and communication strategies, networking).

The survey results confirm that urban forestry is an interdisciplinary field, situated between nature, art, culture, education, social inclusion, economics, science and technology. Integration of the strategic aspects of urban forestry such as policy-making, planning, and design is also required. Survey findings indicate the need for capacity and training in innovation and entrepreneurship-related skills to help bridge these disciplines and views. Building on this, the Uforest alliance, a three-year Knowledge Alliance project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission, is developing a new interdisciplinary training to support students and practitioners working towards innovative urban forestry projects that have to fit into a context of rapid global change. The purpose is to contribute to the development of Urban Forestry entrepreneurial and innovation opportunities and attitudes by improving interdisciplinary skills.

Uforest therefore, responds to the needs of a changing 43 — political and social economy, creating opportunities for new careers, fostering Urban Forestry, through interdisciplinary learning and crosssectors researchbusiness cooperation. Uforest project is a crosssectoral alliance that brings together universities, businesses and public administrations of usually non-collaborative disciplines such as urban planning and architecture, with forestry and urban ecology, as well as with socio-economic and information and communication technologies (ICT).

How Can a Traditional Regional Nature Conservation Agency Foster Inclusive Forest Urbanism.

The ‘Cities Thinking Like a Forest’ vision.

Gert De Keyser, Geert De Blust, Jeroen Panis, Pieter Van den Broeck, Sofia Saavedra Bruno — Agency for Nature & Forest, Urban Development University of Antwerp/ Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Agency for Nature & Forest, Planning & Development, International Center of Urbanism, KU Leuven cities and villages thinking like a forest – cities and villages acting like a forest

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pristine nature, the other attempts to strictly design, control and manage urban landscapes. In both approaches however, a separation of nature and men and society is embedded, making them in essence anthropocentric. Paradoxically, in both approaches, the problem seems to be the absence of people, including their collaborations, politics, power relations, ecological meaning, evolutionary processes and governance arrangements.

Starting from this observation, the Flemish Agency for Nature and Forests (ANB) is initiator of the innovation trajectory and is visionary and concept creator of the policy concept ‘Cities thinking like a forest’ (CTLF). This is now being further elaborated in collaboration with the Research Institute for Nature and Forests, the Flemish Department of Spatial Planning, KU Leuven, cooperatives and several other partners. The aim was to explore how their shared expertise can be adapted, to grow towards a holistic policy for urban nature and so develop a caring attitude in more livable and sustainable cities.

The paper presents how CTLF was set up to reach this goal, taking into account the ecological as well as the social side of this challenge. Since regional nature administrations have traditionally focused on ‘pristine’ natural areas, nature reserves and habitats of high ‘ecological value’, the question was whether and how existing legislative, economic and management instruments as well as their authority, could offer an essential but untapped potential to realize a shift in governance, science and citizenship.

Responding to ecological, and health crises en climate transformation, local governments, nature conservation NGOs and citizens are trying to ‘green’ cities, (re)create urban forests, change urban water systems and the like. Building on traditions of nature conservation, urban sanitation, landscape architecture, among others, two approaches in addressing these issues seem to have become predominant. One is based on the idea of conserving

The innovation mobilizes a socio-ecological approach, a relational perspective, nature management, social innovation theory and its bottom-linked governance perspective, and insights on cross-species collaboration in forestry and urban evolutionary biology. The paper explores how CTLF is experimenting with ways of empowering en facilitating citizens, and instill ownership, as opposed to the current mainly top down approach generating passivity, resistance and even fear.

To transform the current urban nature policy, CTLF

is developing a ‘Nature Fabric Approach’ (NFA), which regards urban nature as a fabric, woven throughout policy domains, spaces, functions and property titles. It is targeted at a community, and should be approached, monitored and evaluated as such. It is cross-linking citizens, businesses, government and every sector of society, uniting them to take action and implement policy.

The paper concludes that to address current urban crises and potentials, a radical urban nature policy transition is necessary, based on a paradigm shift from adding ‘green in cities’ to seeing ‘the urban by nature’. This requires developing new transition process to engage people in making, maintaining and guarantee urban nature, linking citizen initiatives and government facilitation in bottomlinked governance arrangements, and government agencies, scientist en citizens stepping out of comfort zones and taking more dynamic roles.

– Cool Tree Architecture. A descriptive framework for a tree architecture typology to temper urban microclimates.

René van der Velde, Saskia de Wit, Michiel Pouderoijen, Marjolein Pijpers-van Esch, Jaap Smit — Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department of Urbanism Dendrologist at Plantkundig bv urban microclimate – tree architecture – shade cooling – human thermal comfort – tree architecture typology

Trees temper urban microclimates and human thermal comfort through reflection and interception

of solar radiation, but differences between species can vary considerably. Accurate metrics on performance differences between species is currently limited due to, among other things, challenges in collecting data for the large number of available species and cultivars, each of which is ostensibly seen to have its own unique phenotypical characteristics. The task of measuring atmospheric variables associated with 45 — different tree characteristics can be aided by a cool tree architecture typology (cTAT) that elaborate shared physical traits determining the capacity of a species or cultivar to reflect and intercept solar radiation. Such a typology is envisaged to allow for a large number of species/cultivars to be categorized into a lesser number of architectural types, to allow for more rapid development of cooling performance metrics.

After an initial literature review phase in which tree architecture emerged as guiding term and approach, desk-study comparisons of benchmark botanic tree illustrations were used to develop a descriptive framework describing the tree architecture of a particular species or cultivar from the perspective of tempering urban microclimates and human thermal comfort.

Three primary trait sets - crown, foliage and wood – emerge as the critical architectural determinants impacting reflection and interception of solar radiation by urban trees. The crown of a species

or cultivar is further elaborated by two distinctive characteristics that impact shade cooling: crown proportions and crown shape. These traits may change over the lifespan of the tree and, together with total crown area, determine the degree of reflection, interception and shade projection. Relevant foliage characteristics of a species or cultivar was concluded to be determined by four traits: leaf shape, leaf size, leaf hue, and leaf transparency. Together these traits define a particular foliage transparency class, which is augmented (where relevant) by additional characteristics: leaf axis, leaf area index, gap fraction and phenology. Descriptions of wood traits expand on the above-ground woody growth organs at the whole tree scale. A given species is defined by a set of constitutive woody axes according to endogenous morphogenetic processes including trunk morphogenetics, branch morphogenetics, and twig morphogenetics. Tree wood architecture determines the total area and distribution of shading by woody parts of the tree, as well as the form and distribution of foliage clumping.

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This framework was used to elaborate descriptions for 75 temperate climate tree species/cultivars commonly planted in Cfb climate-zone cities, with a focus on Netherlands cities. 2D and 3D architectural drawing conventions formed the basis of these descriptions, with reductions of traits supplemented by text descriptions and supporting visuals. Information from benchmark dendrological literature augmented these descriptions. All descriptions focus on the generative period of tree growth including young, adult and mature stages in tree growth, which represents the period in which trees in urban areas have the most tangible impact on thermal microclimates. Differences in growth stages may impact certain trait configurations in crown and wood trait sets. These differences are to be incorporated in the subsequent cool tree architecture typology key.

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Defining the Peri-urban Forest. The Grand Parc de l’Ouest in Montreal, Canada.

Karmen Hoge — Independent researcher peri-urbanisation – forest urbanism – landscape urbanism – climate resiliency

The City of Montreal has an exceptionally ambitious urban forestry plan, intending to increase canopy cover by 25% by 2025 (Ville de Montréal and ICLEI 2013). The heart of this proposal is the Grand Park de l’Ouest (GPO), which, covering 3000 hectares, would become the largest municipal park in Canada.

The GPO is a planned park in the western corner of the Island of Montreal, launched in 2019 when the City of Montreal acquired 175 hectares of land to connect five existing nature parks (Ville de Montréal and L’Atelier Urbain 2020). While this urban forestry project is in the periphery of the city, it is central in Montreal’s urban agenda to build climate resiliency and could provide valuable insights about why periurban forestry is at the core of sustainable urban development.

One of the GPO’s main objectives is the protection

of the natural environment and biodiversity (Ville de Montréal and L’Atelier Urbain 2020). The scale, continuity, heterogeneity, and ecological complexity of the proposed peri-urban forest highlights the importance of spatial configuration for ecological processes to contribute to increasing biodiversity and resiliency across the landscape. While securing space for environmental protection in areas where urban growth coincides with nature is a major step for Montreal, it also raises questions about whether protection status is enough to adapt to climate change and can contribute to the discourse on urban forestry as a conservation strategy.

The diversity of natural and anthropogenic spaces within the GPO is perhaps the most interesting and challenging aspect of the park. While the proposed recreational activities and ongoing public transportation project aim to increase access to nature, they also highlight that the balance between conservation and development is extremely delicate in peri-urban expansions. With pilot initiatives that aim for coexistence between nature, agriculture, recreation, and education, the GPO emphasizes the neccesity to develop distinctive design approaches for peri-urban forestry projects that merge practices from the urban and natural worlds to enhance the peri-urban landscape and build the public realm in peri-urban communities.

Although Montreal is surrounded by forests, these forests are presently unnamed, inaccessible, and anonymous, making it difficult for communities to relate with them. The GPO will allow urban dwellers to build a relationship with the urban forest, which will in turn foster a new sense of environmental responsibility for the land. The GPO is investigating management strategies to coordinate between the varied ambitions and body of stakeholders.

This peri-urban forest offers an opportunity to challenge traditional government-run conservation frameworks in Canada that exclude human activity and explore innovative management approaches that harness the social capacity for climate resiliency through urban forestry.

In face of today’s urbanization and climate change, cities need bold, multi-functional, and region-wide strategies to build long-term resiliency, and the periurban is at the frontier of this. Projects such as the GPO demonstrate the urgency to define peri-urban forestry as a new entity, where forestry initiatives must be connected to the dynamics of urbanism to imagine sustainable peri-urban landscapes and resilient futures for cities. .

– Dirty Playgrounds. Re-thinking urban playscapes as opportunities for multispecies health and forest regeneration.

Serina Tarkhanian, Coltrane McDowell — Design Academy Eindhoven biodesign – microbiomehealth – bioremediation – ecological succession – more-than-human

This paper analyses the urban architectural typology of the playground as a space for forest regeneration, microbial diversity for multispecies health, and

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multi-generational play. It does so by reflecting on the author’s biodesign project proposal titled Dirty Playground presented at the Biodesign Challenge 2021. The proposal uses Rotterdam as a case study, illustrating how the process of soil remediation and ecological succession could become integral to urban design strategies, and produce an alternative model for designing contemporary playgrounds which foster microbial, plant and human health. The project weaves the principles of biological succession – process by which biological communities evolve over time – into the playground’s multigenerational design itself, which transforms over time into a biodiverse forest holobiont. Through their design proposal, the authors suggest a way in which urban designers and city officials might “design with” (Wakkary 2021) long-term multispecies health and well-being in mind, including generations of humans, microbes and plants.

Most urban centres have an industrialised past, this is apparent through architecture as it is through the soil contaminants leached via industrial activities — 48 over decades. A major challenge to re-foresting urban spaces is how to deal with the existing conditions of these environments. In most cases the process of remediating the soil is forgone in favour of containment, a process which hides rather than directly addresses the issue of soil contamination.

By making space for forests in urban contexts, there also comes the need to address the soil floor these forests interact with, and the human and non-human citizens who will co-habit with them. There is now extensive research on the role of soil microbiomes in facilitating healthy and strong forest ecosystems. The effect soil microbiomes have on human health is also receiving more attention, with studies showing how it may aid in improving immune system response to harmful pathogens and decrease rates of depression.

In other words, playing with dirt, is good for you.

There is an urgent need then, to address soil health as fundamental to reforesting urban spaces and to the long-term health of the forests themselves.

Building off intersecting research around soil

microbiomes, ecological succession and human health, this paper will unpack the opportunities, challenges, and insights central to the concept of ‘dirty playgrounds’, positioning it as a tool for building healthier communities and cities. In providing citizens with spaces of play that contain more biodiverse soil, and eventually plant life, it asks urban planners to rethink the current model of designing playscapes, which tend to build with aseptic materials that supress diverse healthy microbial communities. Accordingly, the paper will challenge current policy timeframes for the development of playgrounds, and how they must adapt to allow for more-than-human kin to thrive in urban spaces. By designing a ‘dirty playground’ that takes into account the aforementioned considerations, the authors see the potential of urban space becoming inclusive of more-thanhuman lives, strengthening and sharing our soil heritages, and a new approach to reforesting cities and forest urbanism.

BOOK LAUNCH

STREETS FOR ALL: 50 IDEAS FOR SHAPING RESILIENT CITIES Shyam Khandekar — Co-Founder and Director of My Liveable City

‘Streets For All’ explores the potential of the most ubiquitous public space in our cities. Going from Egypt to Japan, Sweden to Brazil, and New York to Malta, it examines the social, economic, ecological, architectural and technical dimensions of streets across the world, and offers tactics and strategies on how they can be recast, repurposed and redesigned towards greater resilience and resourcefulness.

Authored by a variety of individuals – citizen activists, photographers, artists, urban designers, architects, landscape architects, ecologists, sociologists, engineers, professors, practitioners – this book interrogates the notion of who our streets are for, who in turn shapes them, by what means, and to what ends. It argues that while we share larger aspirations regarding the future of our streets, the socio-political and cultural realities of the cities in which streets are situated play a crucial role in how we engage in the processes of transforming them. This book reveals why our urban future is being shaped as much by progressive efforts in affluent nations, and those in economically less-developed ones.

COLOPHON CO-CHAIRS CHIARA CAVALIERI LAB, UCLouvain

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

CECIL KONIJNENDIJK Francqui Chair 2022

LAURA CALDERS Department of Architecture, KULeuven

KELLY SHANNON Department of Architecture, KULeuven

CHIARA CAVALIERI LAB, UCLouvain

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE PHILIPPE BARET Earth and Life Institute, UCLouvain FRANCESC BARÓ Department of Geography, VUB NADIA CASABELLA Faculty of Architecture, ULB MICHIEL DEHAENE Department of Architecture, UGent BRUNO DE MEULDER Department of Architecture, KULeuven HANS LEINFELDER Department of Architecture, KULeuven CHRISTIAN MESSIER Francqui Chair 2021-22 BART MUYS Earth and Environmental Sciences, KULeuven BRUNO NOTTEBOOM Department of Architecture, KULeuven BEN SOMERS Earth and Environmental Sciences, KULeuven MAARTEN VAN ACKER Faculty of Design Sciences, UAntwerpen CAROLINE VINCKE Earth and Life Institute, UCLouvain

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BRUNO DE MEULDER Department of Architecture, KULeuven KHALDA EL JACK Department of Architecture, KULeuven KRISTEL MAZY Faculty of Architecture & Urbanism, UMons LISA NEDOSSÉKINA Department of Architecture, KULeuven CECIL KONIJNENDIJK Francqui Chair 2022 KELLY SHANNON Department of Architecture, KULeuven — GRAPHIC DESIGN / WEBSITE Valerian A. Portokalis & Xenia Stoumpou

The International Center of Urbanism (ICoU) focuses on the most pressing contemporary issues at stake in settlements and environments across the globe. Urbanization continues to gallop ahead in most parts of the world, while massive restructuring is clearly necessary in post-industrial societies. At the same time, business as usual is challenged by unprecedented migration of humans and species and the consequences of climate change.

IN COLLABORATION WITH: — KU LEUVEN

— UC LOUVAIN

WITH SUPPORT OF:

ISBN — 978-9-46444-723-1 — 2 / 3