Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications

A horizon scanning workshop was held in Melbourne in June 2018, with participants from academia and institutions such as City of Melbourne, the Nursery and Garden Industry Victoria and the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria. The workshop aimed to explore the future challenges, issues and opportunities for urban forests, in the context of climate change, urbanisation and demographic changes and uncertainties. Through a series of semi-structured activities, the following themes and future scenarios emerged as challenges and opportunities for Melbourne’s urban forest: • The urban forest is a term that is yet to be well defined in research and practice, but could form the basis of a diverse, inclusive and dynamic approach to urban vegetation management on public and private land, for a wide range of meanings, functions and services. • Data will be important for planning and managing the urban forest effectively, but will management focus narrow to the things that are easily measured, and devalue the many aspects of the urban forest that are difficult or impossible to quantify? • Technology will be more important, and genetic engineering could expand the urban forest’s functions and services to provision of glow-in-the-dark trees and air pollution filtration, but how will virtual nature and technological nature allow for the multi-dimensional sensory nature of human nature interactions? • Land use change in response to emerging technologies may generate new opportunities for urban greening. Fleets of autonomous cars may reduce the need for parking and distributed, wireless infrastructure could free up linear corridors, providing new space for the urban forest. Could flying cars free up roads, allowing us to “peel back the concrete”? • Risk aversion is a major brake on the urban forest, resulting in removal of large trees and limiting new plantings; will this lead to treeless, low-risk cities? Alternative futures may embrace risk, by giving urban dwellers the ‘dignity of risk’ or by mitigating risk in the built environment. • Participatory approaches to urban forest planning and management may recognise the multifunctional nature of the urban forest, and the heterogeneous communities that dwell in it. Yet how can we ensure good decision making and the inclusion of expert opinion? • Adapting the urban forest to changing community values and attitudes is needed for success, reducing inequity and increasing access to the urban forest by diverse communities. • Reconciliation between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians will underpin increasing recognition and involvement of traditional owners in urban forest management. • The environment will continue to change, with increasing risks from hotter temperatures, rising sea levels and storm surges. Adapting to these changing conditions could also create unintended consequences if the effects of species change on urban forest meanings, services and ecologies are not well understood. The key recommendations for policy and management to better plan for the future urban forest are: • Manage and plan at the urban forest scale, rather than the individual tree scale. • Plan for future social and biophysical environments, rather than past ones. Learn from success and failure. • Increase diversity to reduce future risk – including genetic, species, age-class diversity, and cultural meaning. • Increase participation in urban forest decision making to better represent the diverse views of the community. • Foster capacity within land managers to better plan and manage the forest, through internal resourcing and collaboration across management authorities. • The multifunctional benefits of the urban forest need to be acknowledged and managed. • Facilitate acceptance of risk in the urban forest. New research questions to help smooth transition to future urban forests include: • Increase social science research on public opinions, attitudes and values of the urban forest and its management. • Understand the effects of artificial lighting on the urban forest. • How can we use the urban forest to reconnect people with nature, and increase the acceptability of risk from natural systems? • How can we have a dense city and an outstanding urban forest? • What will the outcome of using ‘climate ready’ tree species be on urban forest meanings and ecology? Understand the effects on the urban forest of other dimensions of global environmental change such as sea-level rise. • How can we secure water for irrigating the urban forest? • How will pests and diseases change in future environments and future regulatory environments e.g. banning insecticides.

Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications

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