Flanders is one of the least forested areas in Europe and because of the typical dispersed urbanity, only a pattern of many small and few larger fragments of open space and forests remains. There is an undeniable and urgent need for more trees and forests - woody urban green infrastructure (UGI) – in order to ensure the provision of necessary ecosystem services (ES). In a metropolitan area, this UGI assignment requires a design approach on a landscape scale and new spatial concepts based on the multiple use of space.
In this context, the PhD research introduces the concepts of forest configuration and treescape. The aim is to generate new spatial design concepts and strategies for woody UGI in the complex and fragmented landscape of Flanders, using landscape research by design as methodology and with ES provision in mind. To explore new avenues on (woody) urban green infrastructure, Flanders is a unique laboratory to other urbanizing regions because of its heterogeneous urbanized landscape and the amount of available datasets on ES.
Because of its regenerative capacity, woodland has a certain resilience which offers interesting opportunities for multiple land use in time and space. Through a smarter use of available land, new urban tree and forest configurations emerge for a woody UGI. Some of the potential forest configurations are: residential forest (dwellings with woodland gardens), business forest (wooded business park), agricultural forest (food forests).
At the same time, urban trees and forest can easily be intertwined in the urban fabric as part of other urban land use systems. In this way, a treescape or woody UGI arises with the potential to reconnect the fragmented open space and to provide a wide range of ES. A treescape elevates the separate tree and forest configurations to a larger landscape scale significance, planning and design theme. It includes all newly planted urban woody vegetation, basically ranging from one tree to a real forest and the many forms in between.
The proposed PhD research states that a research by design and landscape based methodology has the potential to open up new avenues on how to integrate woody UGI more explicitly in an urbanized territory. Started from a selection of forest ecosystem services, the relation between these services and spatial criteria is set in diagrams and transformed into spatial design principles for urban trees and forests. Then, new concepts for forest configurations are developed and will be applied in the design of a treescape for case study areas.
Design operations will both be used to: 1) explore new possibilities (concepts for urban forest configurations) that may be applied in many different settings, and 2) project these possibilities by applying them to a specific ‘laboratory’ context (scenarios for treescapes in case study areas).
In a context of increasing systemic transitions, re-conceptualizations through designerly thinking are more than ever needed to create new visions regarding the desired human-environment interaction.
Doucet, I. and Janssens, N. (eds.) (2011). Transdisciplinary knowledge production in architecture and urbanism: Towards Hybrid Modes of Inquiry (Vol. 11). Springer Science and Business Media.
Nielsen, A., Hedblom, M., Olafsson, A., Wiström, B. (2017). Spatial configurations of urban forest in different landscape and socio-political contexts : Identifying patterns for green infrastructure planning. Urban Ecosystems, 20(2), pp. 379-392.
Pearlmutter, D., Calfapietra, C., Samson, R., O'Brien, L., Krajter Ostoić, S., Sanesi, G., Alonso del Amo, R. (2017). The urban forest: Cultivating green infrastructure for people and the environment. Springer International Publishing, Cham.
Waldheim, C. (ed.) (2006). The Landscape Urbanism Reader. Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
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