Urban forests, forest urbanisms and global warming: Developing greener, cooler and more resilient and adaptable cities

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank Bruno De Meulder and the JoLA editors for their rounds of editing and insights of the article.Notes1 See: Christophe Girot, who proclaims that the two main archetypes of designed landscapes are the forest clearing and the walled garden. Christophe Girot, The Course of Landscape Architecture: A History of Our Designs on the Natural World, from Prehistory to the Present (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2016).2 See for the recent controversy concerning forest land disputes in Costa Rica: Fred Pearce, ‘Lauded as Green Model, Costa Rica Faces Unrest in Its Forests’, Yale Environment 360 (March 2023), e360.yale.edu/features/costa-rica-deforestation-indigenous-lands, accessed March 2023.3 Hannah Ritchi and Max Roser, ‘Forests and Deforestation’, Our World in Data (2021), ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation, accessed January 2023.4 Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life (New York: Liveright, 2016).5 Cecil Konijnendijk, ‘A Short History of Urban Forestry in Europe’, Journal of Arboriculture 23/1 (1997), 31–19; Cecil Konijnendijk et al. (eds.), Urban Forests and Trees (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2005).6 Erik Jorgensen, ‘Towards an Urban Forestry Concept’, in: Proceedings of the 10th Commonwealth Forestry Conference (Craven Arms, Shropshire, UK: Commonwealth Forestry Association, 1974).7 See, for example: Theodore A. Endreny, ‘Strategically Growing the Urban Forest Will Improve Our World’, Nature Communications 9 (2018), article number 1160, doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-03622-0; Tamara Iungman et al., ‘Cooling Cities through Urban Green Infrastructure: A Health Impact Assessment of European Cities’, The Lancet 401/10376 (2023), 577–589, thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)02585-5/fulltext, accessed March 2023.8 See, for example: Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin, The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Human-kind (New York: Doubleday, 1995); Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (London: Picador, 2015).9 See: Matilda van den Bosch, ‘Impacts of Urban Forests on Physical and Mental Health and Wellbeing’, in: Francesco Ferrini, Cecil C. Konijnendijk van den Bosch and Alessio Fini (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Urban Forestry (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2017), 82–95; Michelle C. Kondo et al., ‘Health Impact Assessment of Philadelphia’s 2025 Tree Canopy Cover Goals’, The Lancet: Planetary Health (April 2020), thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30058-9/fulltext, accessed February 2023; and Iungman et al., ‘Cooling Cities through Urban Green Infrastructure’, op. cit. (note 7).10 See, for example: Hillary Angelo, ‘Added Value? Denaturalizing the “Good” of Urban Greening’, Geography Compass 13/8 (2019): e12459, doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12459, accessed February 2023; and Hamil Pearsall and Isabelle Anguelovski, ‘Contesting and Resisting Environmental Gentrification: Responses to New Paradoxes and Challenges for Urban Environmental Justice’, Sociological Research Online 21/3 (2016), 6, socresonline.org.uk/21/3/6.html.11 See, for example, in Europe: environment.ec.europa.eu/ strategy/biodiversity-strategy-2030/3-billion-trees_en, accessed February 2023; and in Los Angeles: Stephanie Pincetl et al., ‘Urban Tree Planting Programs, Function or Fashion? Los Angeles and Urban Tree Planting Campaigns’, Geo Journal 78 (2013), 475–493.12 See the 3-30-300 rule developed by Cecil Konijnendijk: 3 trees from every home, 30 per cent tree canopy cover in every neighbourhood, 300 m from the nearest public park or green space (nbsi.eu/the-3-30-300-rule/, accessed April 2023).13 John F. Dwyer et al., ‘Assessing the Benefits and Costs of the Urban Forest’, Journal of Arboriculture 18/5 (1992), 227–234.14 In 2006 there were the programmes Million Trees in Los Angeles and Mile High Million in Denver. In 2007, New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation launched its MillionTreesNYC initiative and China began its own Million Tree Project for Shanghai. The million trees programme began in London in 2011.15 Linz in Austria and Portland, Oregon in the US were among the first cities to incentivize green roofs in 1984 and 1996, respectively.16 See Ross W. F. Cameron et al., ‘The Domestic Garden: Its Contribution to Urban Green Infrastructure’, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 11/2 (2012), 129–137; Helena I. Hanson et al., ‘Gardens’ Contribution to People and Urban Green Space’, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 63 (2021), sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1618866721002235, accessed January 2023.17 See, for instance: Sarah Prebble, ‘Smart Urban Forests: An Overview of More-Than-Human and More-Than-Real Urban Forest Management in Australian Cities’, Digital Geography and Society 2 (2021), sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666378321000040, accessed January 2023; and the publications of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), nacto.org/publication, accessed January 2023.18 Rosetta S. Elkin, Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2022).19 See: Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World (New York: Princeton University Press, 2015); Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).20 Stefano Mancuso, The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior (New York: Atria Books, 2017).21 Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering Wisdom in the Forest (New York: Knopf, 2021).22 See: The Weizmann Tree Lab: Tree Eco-physiology in motion, weizmann.ac.il/plants/klein/, accessed January 2023.23 Sonja Dümpelmann, Seeing Trees: A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).24 Sonja Dümpelmann, ‘Plants’, in: Sonja Dümpelmann, The Landscape Project (San Francisco: AR + D Publishing, 2022), 55.25 See: Paulo Tavares, ‘In the Forest Ruins’, e-flux Architecture (2016), e-flux.com/architecture/superhumanity/68688/in-the-forest-ruins/, accessed February 2023; Paulo Tavares, ‘Trees, Vines, Palms and Other Architectural Monuments’, Harvard Design Magazine: Into the Woods 45 (2018), 189–195, paulotavares. net/info, accessed February 2023; and Charles M. Peters, Managing the Wild: Stories of People and Plants and Tropical Forests (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).26 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 11.27 Sylvain Piron, L’Occupation du monde (Brussels: Zones Sensibles, 2018).28 Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon, ‘Forests and Trees in the City: Southwest Flanders and the Mekong Delta’, in: Daniel Czechowski, Thomas Hauck and Georg Hausladen (eds.), Revising Green Infrastructure: Concepts Between Nature and Design (London: CRC Press, 2014), 427–449.29 Charles Waldheim (ed.), Case: Lafayette Park Detroit (New York: Prestel, 2004).30 See: De Meulder and Shannon, ‘Forests and Trees in the City’, op. cit. (note 28); Wim Wambecq and Bruno De Meulder, ‘Flood + Forest: A Migration Corridor for Reconnecting the Brussels Landscape’, Scenario Journal 6 (2017), scenariojournal. com/article/flood-forest/, accessed February 2023; Bruno De Meulder, Kelly Shannon and Minh Quang Nguyen, ‘Forest Urbanisms: Urban and Ecological Strategies and Tools for the Sonian Forest in Belgium’, Landscape Architecture Frontiers 7/1 (2019) 18–33; Wim Wambecq, Forest Urbanism in the Dispersed Flemish Territory (KU Leuven PhD dissertation, 2019); Vu Thi Phuong Linh, Kelly Shannon and Bruno De Meulder, ‘Contested Living with/in the Boeng Chhmar Flooded Forests, Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia’, Land 11/11 (2022), 2080, doi.org/10.3390/land11112080, accessed February 2023.Additional informationNotes on contributorsKelly ShannonKelly Shannon teaches Urbanism at KU Leuven and is programme director of the Master of Human Settlements and the Master of Urbanism, Landscape and Planning. Her research lies at the intersection of critical analysis, projective cartographies and design. Her work focuses on the development of landscape urbanism in times of global warming and the development of strategies that work with water, vegetation and topography. She has published widely and works on design research consultancy projects, mainly for the Vietnamese and Flemish governments.Chiara CavalieriChiara Cavalieri, architect and Doctor of Urbanism (IUAV, University of Venice), is associate professor of Urbanism at the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain). Over the years, she has coordinated and directed several research activities and regional visions such as ‘The Blue Space’, Eurometropolis Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai (StudioPaolaViganò, Lab-U, EPFL Lausanne), ‘The Horizontal Metropolis’ (EPFL Lausanne), ‘The Language of Water’ (UCLouvain with Latitude), LABOXXI (Atlas, L’urbanisation du 20e siècle dans et autour de Bruxelles). She is currently developing research on water and landscape urbanism in transboundary urban territories, with a particular focus on mapping and representing the territorial dynamics involved.Cecil KonijnendijkCecil Konijnendijk is an urban forestry scholar who currently codirects the Nature Based Solutions Institute, a think tank for the evidence-based urban greening. He is also an honorary professor at the University of British Columbia and a visiting scholar at Wageningen University. Cecil has published widely and has advised international organizations and local authorities in more than 30 countries on the development and implementing of urban forestry programmes and plans.