Urban forests and other green spaces make important contributions to the quality of life and environment across the world. The Nordic and Baltic countries have a rich heritage in developing urban green structures. Increasingly the focus is on more integrative planning and management approaches (such as urban forestry and urban greening), as well as on the provision of ecosystem services. Urban green spaces, from woodlands and parks to street trees, need to meet a wide range of (changing) demands, while they are also under pressure in times of further urbanisation, compaction, and decreasing public funding.
Green space governance can be described as those efforts to direct human action towards common goals, and more formally as the setting, application and enforcement of generally agreed to rules. Governance takes place at different hierarchical levels, from city policy making and planning to place making and place keeping at the site level. From a tradition of public authority led urban forestry and urban greening (governance by government), a shift has been occurring to shared decision making and involvement of a wide range of actors (governance with government, and in some cases even governance without government). Important changes have also been occurring in terms of discourses (such as the compact vs. the green city) and an increasing focus on green space quality and standards.
Modern green space governance is a complex field, not in the least because of the diversity of the green space resource, the wide range of interests and actors, the different sets of rules and institutions, as well as the links with other sectors. More structural scientific interest in urban green space governance is of a rather recent date. Quite a number of new (PhD-) studies, however, have recently started that look at governance aspects, such as public involvement, city branding, public-private partnerships, and the changing role of municipal authorities.
This PhD-course, with focus on the Nordic and Baltic countries, aims to provide a platform for discussing state-of-art theories and methodologies for analysing governance in the context of urban forestry and urban greening. The course will have the following learning aims:
- Become familiar with key governance theories in a context of natural resource management.
- Apply (the different perspectives of) governance theory to the specific context of urban forestry and urban greening, for example through a series of cases and through the participant’s own examples, thus obtain better insight and understanding.
- Enhance the theoretical and methodological foundations on PhD research on governance issues in urban forestry and urban greening.
Deadline for registration/admission is march 1st 2012.
Venue: Danish Forestry College, Forest & Landskab, University of Copenhagen, at Nødebo. |
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