Green Cities, Happy Cities - Nine Steps for Strengthening City-Forest Relationships

Green Cities, Happy Cities - Nine Steps for Strengthening City-Forest Relationships

Green Cities, Happy Cities - Nine Steps for Strengthening City-Forest Relationships (#21)

Cecil Konijnendijk van den Bosch ¹

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, SKåNE, Sweden

Scholars and policy-makers across the world are discussing how to develop ’good’ cities that provide safe, healthy, attractive and sustainable environments for the world’s growing urban population. Focus is increasingly on the enhancement of residents’ health, happiness and wellbeing. Approaches and networks such as those of green urbanism and biophilic cities stress the need for a green agenda in urban development. This presentation takes a critical look at how urban forests and urban trees have been used over time to create better cities. Grounded in e.g., Maslow’s pyramid of human needs and scholarly work on successful cities, it presents nine urban-sylvan linkages that can provide a framework for development future arboriculture and urban forestry. These linkages are opportunity (or livelihood), diversity, resiliency, safety, literacy (or learning), liberty, community, happiness and creativity. Over time, these linkages have characterised the relation and – in some cases – symbiosis of city and forest. They can be translated into hand-on guidelines for modern arboriculture and urban forestry, as examples from across the world will show.

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Authors contributing to this abstract.

Konijnendijk van den Bosch, C

Cecil has almost 30 years of experience studying, teaching, and advising on aspects of urban forestry and nature-based solutions. He is widely considered as one of the world’s leading urban forestry experts, and his work has been featured by leading media outlets such as CNBC and in international documentary films. A Dutch national, he has lived and worked in Europe, Asia, and North America. He is an honorary professor of urban forestry at the University of British Columbia. Cecil helped found the leading academic journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, and edited seminal textbooks such as The Routledge Handbook of Urban Forestry. He is currently Editor-in-chief of Arboriculture and Urban Forestry, the scientific journal of the International Society of Arboriculture. Cecil is passionate about using trees and nature to develop better cities, and always stresses the importance of building meaningful relationships between people and places. He has advised international organisations such as the United Nations, as well as national and local governments in more than 30 countries, and was an invited panellist at the 8th Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe in April 2021. He was co-chair of the 1st World Forum on Urban Forestry, held in Mantova, Italy, and also chaired one of the days during the recent 2nd World Forum on Urban Forests in Washington DC. Cecil currently lives in Zeist, The Netherlands, from where he co-runs the Nature Based Solutions Institute, a think tank for the evidence-based greening of cities.

Green Cities, Happy Cities - Nine Steps for Strengthening City-Forest Relationships (#21)

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