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The motivations, desired outcomes, and visions of partner organizations to Collective Impact tree planting: A transdisciplinary case study of CommuniTree in Northwest Indiana, U.S
Abstract
In Northwest Indiana, a new urban forestry effort called CommuniTree has emerged with a goal of helping solve some of the region’s post-industrial social and ecological issues. Though no panacea, tree planting can have significant benefits, including air pollution abatement, temperature moderation, stormwater management, and beautification. CommuniTree is a Collective Impact-style collaborative of over a dozen partner groups (public, nonprofit, private, and partnership organizations) that plants trees on public and industrial properties in post-industrial Northwest Indiana communities where urban forestry governance and resources are relatively lacking. This paper presents the results of the first phase of a transdisciplinary research program that draws insights from urban forest governance scholarship and transdisciplinary sustainability science as well as from urban forest professionals involved in CommuniTree who helped design the research. We used a transdisciplinary case study approach with qualitative interviews with key informants from CommuniTree partner organizations to investigate partner organizations’ motivations for participating, desired outcomes, and long-term visions for CommuniTree. We find that the CommuniTree partnership itself is an intrinsic incentive to partners’ participation: once an influential champion brought the group together, they were motivated to stay involved by the work and structure of CommuniTree. The scant existing urban forest governance in the region also motivated partners to contribute to CommuniTree collective action. For desired outcomes, we find that partners are interested in the potential improvements to ecological quality that may result for the region such as improved stormwater management and air quality, but that more than ecological outcomes, partners are interested in the social outcomes that might come of the CommuniTree, including engaging communities in ecological stewardship activities and the beautification and general improvements to public spaces that result from tree planting. And for its future, partners conveyed a plurality of visions for CommuniTree’s growth including expanding the program to new communities, planting trees on new types of locations, and involving more partners, the general public, and new volunteer groups. However, current CommuniTree structure has vulnerabilities to its sustainability and longevity, including a reliance on predominantly grant funding, shifting organizational dynamics within/among partners, and a lack of systematic integration of the voices of local community members. In conclusion, this research on CommuniTree’s structure and function (i.e., the governance and activities) and on what partners value as desired outcomes and for the future informs an understanding of the vulnerabilities and opportunities for CommuniTree as the program evolves to better meet the needs of current partners, future stakeholders, and, most importantly, community members.
In order to meet comprehensive planting goals, tree-planting campaigns must plant on private properties, in residential front and backyards. Successful engagement in these kinds of neighborhood plantings requires community leadership and outreach. Through surveys with past recipients of free 1”-caliper trees, past neighborhood leaders of tree-planting recruiting, and door-to-door canvassing in a pilot neighborhood, this study shows that recruiting efforts are significantly more successful with a peer-to-peer approach. Surveys asked past tree recipients their main motivations for accepting a free tree, and three reasons rose to the top: trees provide beauty, trees help the environment, and trees keep people healthy. Top barriers for declining a free tree included not desiring more trees than they had, concerns about maintenance, and a language barrier; but these barriers could be overcome with a designated neighborhood leader in place. These results can inform tree-planting campaigns and tree-focused organizations in order to improve messaging and neighborhood engagement – all to ensure that more trees are planted and canopy is increased.
In this paper, we examine the mechanisms of volunteering at tree-planting events conducted as part of a new, multi-organizational tree-planting effort in northwest Indiana called CommuniTree. A broad literature exists on general volunteerism as well as environmental volunteering, urban forestry volunteering, and even tree-planting volunteering. Yet, the motivations, environmental attitudes, and personal efficacy of urban forestry volunteers in particular are not fully understood, nor are the outcomes and implications of volunteer participation in neighborhood greening programs. A 22-question (34 individual items), self-report survey was administered in-person at CommuniTree tree-planting events in 2017 through 2019, obtaining 114 responses. CommuniTree volunteers who responded to our survey are mostly white, male, full-time students of college age (18-24), who came to the tree planting by way of their university professor or a friend or family member telling them about it. Volunteers who completed our survey were motivated by intrinsic factors including a desire to help the community and a desire to help the environment, as well as extrinsic factors such as to complete community service hours, receive school-related extra credit, or as required through their employer’s partnership with CommuniTree. Additionally, volunteers report high rates of pro-environmental behavior, a high-level understanding of environmental issues, and high personal efficacy. Here, we frame our results in terms of the Volunteer Process Model’s three phases of volunteerism, and thereby consider the antecedents or prior conditions, experiences, and consequences or outcomes of volunteering in the context of respondent motivations, attitudes, knowledge, personal efficacy, and self-reported benefits and drawbacks of trees.
Systems, targets and transformations are guiding metaphors of environmental and sustainability research. Is the framing of these concepts still adequate to address today’s wicked sustainability challenges?
Transformation towards sustainable development is about findings new ways of thinking, organising and doing to navigate wicked challenges such as climate change and urbanisation. Such challenges call for new governance modes that match the complexity of the systems to be handled, where multi-level governance and collaborative approaches have been suggested to contribute to such transformative capacity building. This in-depth, trans-disciplinary study investigates how the multi-level governance context in Stockholm, Sweden, influences the transformative capacity from the perspective of local sustainability initiatives. It was found that even though the decentralized governance of the Stockholm region hosts a great potential in supporting city wide transformation, it is hampered by disconnect between actors, levels and sectors and the short-term funding structure. The suggested interventions highlight the tension between enabling collaborations, while safeguarding a high local diversity of initiatives and flexibility to ensure sustained space for innovation and learning.
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Transdisciplinary (TD) research is increasingly suggested as a means of tackling wicked problems by providing knowledge on solutions that serve as pathways towards sustainable development. In contrast to research striving for generalizable findings, TD research produces insights for a particular case and context. TD researchers, who build on other TD projects’ results, need to know under what conditions knowledge gained from their case can be transferred to and applied in another case and context. Knowledge transfer between researchers and stakeholders is extensively discussed in the literature. However, a more profound understanding and management of the challenges related to knowledge transfer across cases, as it applies to TD research, are missing. We specify the challenges of knowledge transfer in TD research by distinguishing TD research for policy from conventional evidence-based policy, which relies on generalizing findings, such as randomized controlled trials. We also compare the functions that cases fulfil in other types of research that include basic, applied and ideographic research. We propose to conceptualize transferability of knowledge across cases as arguments by analogy. Methodologically, this would imply explicit consideration on whether the cases in question are sufficiently similar in relevant aspects while not dissimilar in other additional relevant aspects. On the one hand, this approach calls for explicit material considerations that are needed to learn about which aspects of cases are relevant. On the other hand, formal considerations on how to weigh perceived relevant similarities and dissimilarities of the cases at hand for transferability of knowledge, are needed. Empirical research on how projects in TD research deal with this problem is called for.
Repurposing vacant land for food production is expanding as a response to urban blight, food insecurity and food deserts. As municipalities integrate urban agriculture in their sustainability plans and zoning regulations, scholars are beginning to take a broader look at the benefits from this and other types of greening strategies. This article investigates current state of research and practice of urban agriculture as an emerging strategy for regenerating shrinking cities. It highlights key findings while offering observations on how public officials and practitioners can leverage this research to enhance urban agriculture as a treatment for vacant land.
struggled with how to treat all its citizens equitably and fairly while wealth and power are concentrated in a very small segment of our society. Now, in the face of growing public awareness and outcry about the centuries-long injustices experienced by African Americans, Native Americans, new immigrants, and other marginal-ized groups, we believe that our nation urgently needs collaborative multisector approaches toward equity and justice. For maximum effectiveness, these approaches must include and prioritize leadership by those most affected by injustice and inequity in order to effect structural and systemic changes that can support and sustain inclusive and healthy communities. Traditional community organizing and working for policy change will supplement the collaborative approach. We believe that efforts that do not start with treating community leaders and residents as equal partners cannot later be reengineered to meaningfully share power. In short, coalitions and collaborations need a new way of engaging with communities that leads to transformative changes in power, equity, and justice. To that end, a group of us have developed a set of six principles under the name " Collaborating for Equity and Justice. " Drawn from decades of research, organizing, and experience in a wide range of fields, these principles facilitate successful cross-sector collaboration for social change in a way that explicitly lifts up equity and justice for all and creates measurable change. We do not propose one specific model or methodology , recognizing that no single model or methodology can thoroughly address the inequity and injustice facing communities that have historically experienced powerlessness. Instead, we provide principles linked to web-based tools that can be incorporated into existing and emerging models and methodologies, toward developing collaborations that will increase the likelihood of systemic and lasting change that ensures equity and justice for all community members. The principles we developed were also in response to popular use of what we perceive to be a flawed model: Collective Impact (CI). Foundations, government agencies, health systems, researchers, and other actors in the past relied on sophisticated collaborative models, such as Frances Butterfoss and Michelle Keg-ler's Community Coalition Action Theory, Tom Wolff's Power of Collaborative Solutions Model, and Pennie Foster-Fishman
Northwest Indiana is a region with a storied economic past. Once one of the dominant steel and manufacturing powerhouses of the United States, in the 1970s the region began a decline similar to other “rust belt” regions in the United States. Since the 1970s the region has undergone dramatic change as it struggles to define itself for the twenty-first century. Despite these challenges, the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and trends, when viewed at the regional level, appear quite typical for United States. However, the representative nature of Northwest Indiana at this level conceals vast differences between cities within the region. In this paper I analyze the broad socioeconomic and demographic changes in Northwest Indiana at the city-level since the 1970s. I find significant variation between cities within the region in terms of trends in population, income, age, education, race, ethnicity and poverty. The former urban core of the region still faces significant challenges, while some of the surrounding cities and towns have been extremely successful and are developing faster than the state of Indiana and the Nation overall.
To address the invasion of non-native Phragmites in the Great Lakes, researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey—Great Lakes Science Center partnered with the Great Lakes Commission in 2012 to establish the Great Lakes Phragmites Collaborative (GLPC). The GLPC is a regional-scale partnership established to improve collaboration among stakeholders and increase the effectiveness of non-native Phragmites management and research. Rather than forming a traditional partnership with a narrowly defined goal, the GLPC follows the principles of collective impact to engage stakeholders, guide progress, and align resources to address this complex, regional challenge. In this paper, the concept and tenets of collective impact are described, the GLPC is offered as a model for other natural resource-focused collective impact efforts, and steps for establishing collaboratives are presented. Capitalizing on the interactive collective impact approach, the GLPC is moving toward a broadly accepted common agenda around which agencies and individuals will be able to better align their actions and generate measureable progress in the regional campaign to protect healthy, diverse ecosystems from damage caused by non-native Phragmites. © 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland (outside the USA)
The empirical evidence in the papers in this special issue identifies pervasive and difficult cross-scale and cross-level interactions in managing the environment. The complexity of these interactions and the fact that both scholarship and management have only recently begun to address this complexity have provided the impetus for us to present one synthesis of scale and cross-scale dynamics. In doing so, we draw from multiple cases, multiple disciplines, and multiple perspectives. In this synthesis paper, and in the accompanying cases, we hypothesize that the dynamics of cross-scale and cross-level interactions are affected by the interplay between institutions at multiple levels and scales. We suggest that the advent of co-management structures and conscious boundary management that includes knowledge co-production, mediation, translation, and negotiation across scale-related boundaries may facilitate solutions to complex problems that decision makers have historically been unable to solve.
Trees provide numerous benefits for urban residents, including reduced energy usage, improved air quality, stormwater management, carbon sequestration, and increased property values. Quantifying these benefits can help justify the costs of planting trees. In this paper, we use i-Tree Streets to quantify the benefits of street trees planted by nonprofits in three U.S. cities (Detroit, Michigan; Indianapolis, Indiana, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) from 2009 to 2011. We also use both measured and modeled survival and growth rates to “grow” the tree populations 5 and 10 years into the future to project the future benefits of the trees under different survival and growth scenarios. The 4059 re-inventoried trees (2864 of which are living) currently provide almost $40,000 (USD) in estimated annual benefits ($9–$20/tree depending on the city), the majority (75%) of which are increased property values. The trees can be expected to provide increasing annual benefits during the 10 years after planting if the annual survival rate is higher than the 93% annual survival measured during the establishment period. However, our projections show that with continued 93% or lower annual survival, the increase in annual benefits from tree growth will not be able to make up for the loss of benefits as trees die. This means that estimated total annual benefits from a cohort of planted trees will decrease between the 5-year projection and the 10-year projection. The results of this study indicate that without early intervention to ensure survival of planted street trees, tree mortality may be significantly undercutting the ability of tree-planting programs to provide benefits to neighborhood residents.
This paper provided results of a framework-based self-reflection process conducted by the science and the practice leaders of two transdisciplinary projects realized in co-leadership from 2011 until 2014. It analyzes from the perspectives of the science and practice leaders for the whole research process including preparation, research, and follow-up phase, the (1) transdisciplinarity component of each module (in %); (2) outputs generated (tangible and intangible); (3) relevance of output for science and practice (qualitative ranking); (4) impacts emerging from the outputs (tangible and intangible); and (5) outcomes emerging from the impacts (tangible and intangible). Furthermore, the research process was reflected by practice and science project leaders and critical aspects identified. We found that first, a transdisciplinary research process might contribute to regional demands if it is carried out “timely.” Timeliness includes (1) the need from the perspective of the practice partners and the scientific community, (2) the willingness of the co-leaders to develop the project together, and (3) the fundamental organizational support. This was the case in our project where the results directly impacted the further development of the project. Second, a truly lived co-leadership consisting of clearly defined and lived roles and responsibilities, common definition and alignment of the goals, and acceptance of the differences in needs by practice and science leads to a trustful cooperation. Third, a good communication structure within the teams and between the practice and science teams allows to anticipating and overcoming problems at the practice-science interface leading to mutual learning and experience building.
There is increasing recognition of the importance for local biodiversity of post-mining sites, many of which lie near communities that have suffered significant social and economic deprivation as the result of mine closures. However, no studies to date have actively used the knowledge of local communities to relate the history and treatment of post-mining sites to their current ecological status. We report a study of two post-mining sites in the Yorkshire coalfield of the UK in which the local community were involved in developing site histories and assessing plant and invertebrate species composition. Site histories developed using participatory GIS revealed that the sites had a mixture of areas of spontaneous succession and technical reclamation, and identified that both planned management interventions and informal activities influenced habitat heterogeneity and ecological diversity. Two groups of informal activity were identified as being of particular importance. Firstly, there has been active protection by the community of flower-rich habitats of conservation value (e.g. calcareous grassland) and distinctive plant species (e.g. orchids) which has also provided important foraging resources for butterfly and bumblebee species. Secondly, disturbance by activities such as use of motorbikes, informal camping, and cutting of trees and shrubs for fuel, as well as planned management interventions such as spreading of brick rubble, has provided habitat for plant species of open waste ground and locally uncommon invertebrate species which require patches of bare ground. This study demonstrates the importance of informal, and often unrecorded, activities by the local community in providing diverse habitats and increased biodiversity within a post-mining site, and shows that active engagement with the local community and use of local knowledge can enhance ecological interpretation of such sites and provide a stronger basis for successful future management.
Urban forests - trees and vegetation in cities - produce numerous benefits for urban residents. The study and practice of urban forestry aims to understand how trees and their benefits are produced and maintained over time. Urban forestry (tree population management) and the related field of arboriculture (single-tree management) are less known outside of the forestry and horticulture disciplines in which these fields developed. Because urban forests are best understood as social-ecological systems, urban forestry research using interdisciplinary methods and theory is beginning to become more common. In this paper, we surveyed educators and leaders of urban forestry and/or arboriculture programs across the world to examine the interdisciplinary basis of these programs. We summarize here the responses of 116 institutions of higher education (85 within the United States) with urban forestry and/or arboriculture coursework. Seventy-four percent of institutions considered urban forestry/arboriculture to be interdisciplinary. Some disciplines (e.g., biology/ecology, forestry) are already very incorporated into their program's current curriculum, and the importance of several other disciplines is recognized even while incorporation is not yet fully realized (e.g., urban planning, natural resource management, environmental science/studies). However, many major disciplines that have relevance to urban forestry/arboriculture are not rated as particularly important to the field, much less incorporated into curriculum (e.g., anthropology/sociology, economics, engineering, public policy/public affairs). Our study serves as a foundation on which to begin strengthening the interdisciplinary ties of urban forestry and arboriculture.
Transdisciplinarity integrates or relates different epistemics from science and practice (Mode 2 transdisciplinarity) or from branches of disciplines if interdisciplinary integration is impossible (Mode 1 transdisciplinarity). The paper explains, based on an analysis of the historical development of the Mode 2 transdisciplinarity concept, how transdisciplinary processes link interdisciplinary applied research and multi-stakeholder discourses by facilitating methods. We elaborate on what type of problems may be managed using what knowledge, how this might be accomplished, what types of objectives are desired, and by what organizational means. Thus the paper presents ontology, epistemology, methodology, functionality, and organization of an ideal type of transdisciplinary process. Socially robust orientations are the expected outcomes of this process. These orientations provide science-based, state-of-the-art, socially accepted options of solutions which acknowledge uncertainties and the incompleteness of different forms of epistemics (i.e., of knowing or thought), in particular within the sustainable transitioning of complex real-world problems.
Key Points
· Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly imperiled, and funders, nongovernmental organizations, community groups, and government agencies around the world are working to restore ecological function and resiliency to these critical resources.
· What does it take to structure, support, and implement truly effective, broad-scale watershed restoration? This article will describe the unconventional funding strategies catalyzing collective impact across multiple restoration groups working in a diverse set of watersheds and share the challenges and opportunities encountered while implementing these strategies.
· In Oregon, an experimental 10-year collaboration aimed at improving the health of the Willamette River system is being led by the Portland-based Meyer Memorial Trust with support from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation and the state-administered Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. These groups are providing the “scaffolding” and supporting the distributed leadership needed to reverse the trajectory of change in the Willamette by aligning their grant programs around shared, science-based restoration priorities; identifying and filling key capacity needs of local watershed groups and land trusts; and facilitating more and better collaboration in restoration planning, implementation, and monitoring.
A growing body of literature supports microbial symbiosis as a foundational principle for the competitive success of invasive plant species. Further exploration of the relationships between invasive species and their associated microbiomes, as well as the interactions with the microbiomes of native species, can lead to key new insights into invasive success and potentially new and effective control approaches. In this manuscript, we review microbial relationships with plants, outline steps necessary to develop invasive species control strategies that are based on those relationships, and use the invasive plant species Phragmites australis (common reed) as an example of how development of microbial-based control strategies can be enhanced using a collective impact approach. The proposed science agenda, developed by the Collaborative for Microbial Symbiosis and Phragmites Management, contains a foundation of sequential steps and mutually-reinforcing tasks to guide the development of microbial-based control strategies for Phragmites and other invasive species. Just as the science of plant-microbial symbiosis can be transferred for use in other invasive species, so too can the model of collective impact be applied to other avenues of research and management.
The sustainability of regional development can be usefully explored through several different lenses. In situations in which uncertainties and change are key features of the ecological landscape and social organization, critical factors for sustainability are resilience, the capacity to cope and adapt, and the conservation of sources of innovation and renewal. However, interventions in social-ecological systems with the aim of altering resilience immediately confront issues of governance. Who decides what should be made resilient to what? For whom is resilience to be managed, and for what purpose? In this paper we draw on the insights from a diverse set of case studies from around the world in which members of the Resilience Alliance have observed or engaged with sustainability problems at regional scales. Our central question is: How do certain attributes of governance function in society to enhance the capacity to manage resilience? Three specific propositions were explored: (1) participation builds trust, and deliberation leads to the shared understanding needed to mobilize and self-organize; (2) polycentric and multilayered institutions improve the fit between knowledge, action, and social-ecological contexts in ways that allow societies to respond more adaptively at appropriate levels; and (3) accountable authorities that also pursue just distributions of benefits and involuntary risks enhance the adaptive capacity of vulnerable groups and society as a whole. Some support was found for parts of all three propositions. In exploring the sustainability of regional social-ecological systems, we are usually faced with a set of ecosystem goods and services that interact with a collection of users with different technologies, interests, and levels of power. In this situation in our roles as analysts, facilitators, change agents, or stakeholders, we not only need to ask: The resilience of what, to what? We must also ask: For whom?
We explore whether Rotterdam city has the governance capacity in terms of processes at place, and the attention in terms of vision and strategy to take up an integrated approach toward urban resilience. We adopt an interpretative policy analysis approach to assess the dynamics of urban ecosystem governance considering interviews, gray literature, and facilitated dialogues with policy practitioners. We show the inner workings of local government across strategic, operational, tactical, and reflective governance processes about the way urban ecosystems are regulated. Despite the existing capacity to steer such processes, a number of underlying challenges exist: need for coordination between planning departments; need to ease the integration of new policy objectives into established adaptive policy cycles; and need to assess the lessons learnt from pilots and emerging green initiatives. Regulating and provisioning ecosystem services receive heightened policy attention. Focus on regulating services is maintained by a policy renewal cycle that limits and delays consideration of other ecosystem services in policy and planning.
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The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-014-0512-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
A decline in urban forest structure and function in the United States jeopardizes the current focus on developing sustainable cities. A number of social dilemmas—for example, free-rider problems—restrict the sustainable production of ecosystem services and the stock of urban trees from which they flow. However, institutions, or the rules, norms, and strategies that affect human decision-making, resolve many such social dilemmas, and thus, institutional analysis is imperative for understanding urban forest management outcomes. Unfortunately, we find that the definition of institutions varies greatly across and within disciplines, and conceptual frameworks in urban forest management and urban ecosystems research often embed institutions as minor variables. Given the significance of institutional analysis to understanding sustainable rural resource management, this paper attempts to bring clarity to defining, conceptually framing, and operationally analyzing institutions in urban settings with a specific focus on sustainable urban forest management. We conclude that urban ecologists and urban forest management researchers could benefit from applying a working definition of institutions that uniquely defines rules, norms, and strategies, by recognizing the nested nature of operational, collective choice, and constitutional institutions, and by applying the Institutional Analysis and Development framework for analysis of urban social-ecological systems (SESs). Such work promises to spur the desired policy-based research agenda of urban forestry and urban ecology and provide cross-disciplinary fertilization of institutional analysis between rural SESs and urban ecosystems.
The provision of ecosystem services is a prominent rationale for urban greening, and there is a prevailing mantra that 'trees are good'. However, understanding how urban trees contribute to sustainability must also consider disservices. In this perspective article, we discuss recent research on ecosystem disservices of urban trees, including infrastructure conflicts, health and safety impacts, aesthetic issues, and environmentally detrimental consequences, as well as management costs related to ecological disturbances and risk management. We also discuss tradeoffs regarding species selection and local conservation concerns, as well as the central role of human perception in the interpretation of ecosystem services and disservices, particularly the uncritical assertion that 'everybody loves trees'. Urban forestry decision-making that fails to account for disservices can have unintended negative consequences for communities. Further research is needed regarding life cycle assessments, stakeholder decision-making, return-on-investment, and framings of services and disservices in urban forestry.
In this paper, we describe the theory and research design for a new collaborative tree-planting initiative in northwest Indiana in the Midwest United States. The CommuniTree initiative is attempting to alleviate some of the social and ecological issues experienced by post-industrial Rust Belt communities. Northwest Indiana was dominated by heavy industry, particularly steel, throughout much of the 20th century, until the decline of manufacturing and the closing of plants in the 1980s and 1990s, causing well-paying jobs to disappear and population to decline, leaving residential and commercial vacancies and a decimated tax base. The communities in northwest Indiana are still feeling the social, economic, ecological legacies of this post-industrial history, including environmental degradation, high industrial land use and impervious surfaces, and low tree canopy cover, creating air pollution, stormwater quantity and quality, urban heat island issues, among other problems. With a goal of helping alleviate some of these post-industrial challenges, the CommuniTree initiative was launched in 2017. CommuniTree is a new multi-organizational, collaborative urban forestry partnership that engages in grant- and donor-funded tree planting in several underserved northwest Indiana municipalities. The effort is loosely based on the collective impact model. Collective impact is a means of coordinating multiple organizations around a “shared vision” to solve a specific issue – in CommuniTree’s case, the lack of urban forest governance and resources in northwest Indiana compounding the aforementioned post-industrial social and ecological issues. Supported by over a dozen stakeholder groups, CommuniTree plants and cares for trees and engages communities in urban forestry training. This paper describes CommuniTree programming in more detail, as well as presents an applied, transdisciplinary, mixed methods research agenda. Through research with stakeholders, we seek to understand the mechanisms through which CommuniTree activities translate resources into outcomes in the social-ecological context of northwest Indiana and evaluate the sustainability of CommuniTree.
Urban expansion is threatening ecosystem service delivery, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where urbanisation rates are among the fastest globally. Greenspaces offer opportunities to prioritise ecosystem services for city residents. However, the success of greenspace conservation is more often driven by their acceptability to a range of stakeholders than by scientific evidence, highlighting the need to acknowledge multiple perspectives when implementing greenspace conservation activities. We used the Q-methodology to describe and compare the viewpoints of three stakeholder categories for the services and disservices provided by greenspaces in two fast-growing Ghanaian cities. Ecosystem services were generally valued, however there was strong heterogeneity in viewpoints among respondents. The main concerns included regulating services, heritage aspects and contributions to economic development. Comparisons between viewpoints revealed both substantial differences between stakeholder categories and consensus around specific ecosystem services. Recognising shared viewpoints and areas of disagreement may increase the acceptability of greenspace implementation measures. Furthermore, addressing the disservices brought about via greenspace degradation is crucial. Our study shows that, in fast-growing cities in Ghana, a forerunner of urban development in Sub-Saharan Africa, specific ecosystem services such as shade provision, play a pivotal role in promoting greenspace conservation.
Compact urban development, social demands and austerity measures are increasing pressures on urban greenspace. Meanwhile, active citizens, defined as voluntary individuals or groups who self-organize to contribute to urban green space development, provide ecological and social benefits to urban societies. This has inspired local governments to seek collaborations with non-state actors, including active citizens. However, the diverging aims, place-specific focus, and varying expertise of active citizenship may inhibit its contribution to ecological connectivity and upscaling beyond the local scale.
In this paper, we investigate how “mosaic governance” has potential as a framework for understanding active citizenship, its potential for upscaling and its relationship to strategic UGI planning. Using the policy arrangements approach, we analyse the role of discourse, resources, actors and rules of the game in the upscaling of active citizenship. Based on eight empirical cases from seven European cities, we analyse the diversity of collaborations between local governments and active citizens in greenspace development.
The cases show how active citizens can significantly contribute to UGI planning and implementation, for example by developing large parks with volunteers or designing a network of green corridors. The cases reveal multiple ways citizens and local governments benefit from collaborations, as well as different pathways for upscaling innovative discourses and practices from local communities to formal policy or to other cities. To enable upscaling, UGI planning needs to combine long-term, more formalized and higher-scale strategic approaches with more incremental approaches that correspond with localized, fragmented and informal efforts of local communities. While collaborations between municipalities and active citizenship is not without its difficulties, the examples of upscaling in our cases demonstrate the transformative power active citizens may have towards a more green, just and democratic city.<br/
This paper quantitatively examines what drives brownfield redevelopment and what factors predict a completed brownfield redevelopment. This research investigated 200 brownfield properties that were listed with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and redeveloped between the years 2000 and 2015. Three significant correlations were found in this study: socio-economic factor (income level), green development, and tax incentives significantly correlated with brownfield redevelopment. The combination of six predictor variables was analyzed using multiple regression. Socio-economic (income level) [β = 0.27, t = 3.96, p < 0.001] and sustainable building practice (green development) [β = −0.17, t = −2.56, p = 0.01] significantly predicted brownfield redevelopment. Type of contamination (β = 0.07, t = 0.98, p > 0.05), political climate (β = −0.04, t = −0.52, p > 0.05) and stakeholder involvement (β = 0.04, t = 0.62, p > 0.05) did not significantly predict brownfield redevelopment. Hypothesis two and four assessed predictors of brownfield redevelopment. The findings indicated a significant relationship between brownfield redevelopment and two variables (a) socio-economic factor (income levels) significantly predicted brownfield redevelopment, and (b) green development significantly predicted brownfield redevelopment. The higher value of socio-economic factor, the higher value of brownfield redevelopment. The projects with sustainable development had high brownfield redevelopment value than projects without green development. Recommendations for practice include (a) developers and other stakeholders incorporate sustainable building practices in brownfield redevelopments, (b) government agencies involved in the building process such as building and planning departments provide narratives of best practices in sustainable building to help guide brownfield redevelopments and implement policies to mitigate the displacement of low income residents (c) creation of a centralized database of brownfields that have been redeveloped detailing the project attributes. Recommendations for future research may include (a) quantitative study of demographic factors such as age, gender, race, and education as possible predictors of successful brownfield redevelopment and (b) a study on the types of contamination that have been successfully remediated resulting in a successful brownfield redevelopment.
Two original research pieces – both about the outcomes of tree planting, with similar research designs, both published in January 2018 (Whitburn et al. in Environment and Behavior, and Watkins et al. in Cities) – cite precisely zero journal articles in common. This commentary presents a qualitative & quantitative analysis of the citation lists of these two pieces. Of 101 total journal articles cited across both pieces, I find no overlap in scholarly journal articles cited, and only 3 of 62 scholarly journals cited in common. One of the pieces cites not a single article from Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. I use the comparison between these two articles (one of which is my own) as an example of the potential pitfalls of inter- and transdisciplinary scholarship on the social benefits of urban greening. I conclude the commentary with several practical steps we can take as reflective and mindful researchers – steps I myself will be taking – to reduce the likelihood that important insights from the literature are missed during all phases of research.
In Detroit, Michigan, a non-profit organization responsible for planting street trees on city-owned property in neighborhoods received “no-tree requests” (NTR) from 24 percent of residents approached between 2011 and 2014. This example reflects a barrier to urban tree canopy improvement. Power dynamics between stakeholders can be a key reason for resistance to tree-planting. In this study, we sought a deeper understanding of perspectives on the uses and consequences of power in a street-tree planting program in Detroit, Michigan by answering three questions: Who wins? Who loses? Who decides? Interviews with city residents who submitted NTR or received trees, as well as those within the non-profit organization, provided data for this study. Results showed that the non-profit organization made decisions regarding which trees to plant in particular locations, and maintenance protocols. Many residents felt they “lost” with the tree-planting program (i.e. they were unable to have their values integrated into the tree-planting program) due to lack of decision-making involvement about tree species selection and maintenance responsibilities. Negative experiences with trees, particularly lack of city tree maintenance, contributed to residents’ views of the problems with the tree-planting program. Those within the non-profit organization focused on educating residents about the benefits of trees to increase acceptance of tree-planting, and expected residents to participate in tree maintenance. These findings demonstrate the importance of providing information relevant to participants who serve as partners in long term stewardship of trees, and the need to include residents in decision-making to identify and achieve shared goals.
Urban impervious surfaces convert precipitation to stormwater runoff, which causes water quality and quantity problems. While traditional stormwater management has relied on gray infrastructure such as piped conveyances to collect and convey stormwater to wastewater treatment facilities or into surface waters, cities are exploring green infrastructure to manage stormwater at its source. Decentralized green infrastructure leverages the capabilities of soil and vegetation to infiltrate, redistribute, and otherwise store stormwater volume, with the potential to realize ancillary environmental, social, and economic benefits. To date, green infrastructure science and practice have largely focused on infiltration-based technologies that include rain gardens, bioswales, and permeable pavements. However, a narrow focus on infiltration overlooks other losses from the hydrologic cycle, and we propose that arboriculture – the cultivation of trees and other woody plants – deserves additional consideration as a stormwater control measure. Trees interact with the urban hydrologic cycle by intercepting incoming precipitation, removing water from the soil via transpiration, enhancing infiltration, and bolstering the performance of other green infrastructure technologies. However, many of these interactions are inadequately understood, particularly at spatial and temporal scales relevant to stormwater management. As such, the reliable use of trees for stormwater control depends on improved understanding of how and to what extent trees interact with stormwater, and the context-specific consideration of optimal arboricultural practices and institutional frameworks to maximize the stormwater benefits trees can provide.
Active citizens may contribute to the environmental, social, and institutional resilience of cities. This review discusses how citizen initiatives protect biodiversity hotspots, contribute to social cohesion, institutional innovation, and diversity in urban green space management. Challenges related to social inclusiveness, ecological connectivity and continuity suggest government involvement is pertinent, but needs to be refocused. To maximise environmental outcomes of active citizenship, governments may adopt an enabling and stimulating governance style that harnesses the transformative potential of active citizenship. This paper argues for mosaic governance to work with the heterogeneous array of people, institutions, and spatial practices associated with active citizenship. Mosaic governance aims for a context-sensitive way of urban green infrastructure planning, enhancing relationships between the diversity of landscapes and communities across cities.
In an increasingly urbanized world, air pollution mitigation is considered one of most important issues in city planning. Urban trees help to improve air quality by facilitating widespread deposition of various gases and particles through the provision of large surface areas as well as through their influence on microclimate and air turbulence. However, many of these trees produce wind-dispersed pollen (a known allergen) and emit a range of gaseous substances that take part in photochemical reactions – all of which can negatively affect air quality. The degree to which these air-quality impacts are manifested depends on species-specific tree properties: that is, their “traits”. We summarize and discuss the current knowledge on how such traits affect urban air pollution. We also present aggregated traits of some of the most common tree species in Europe, which can be used as a decision-support tool for city planning and for improving urban air-quality models.
Current political trends and scholarly research increasingly promotes network and participatory governance in multi-level systems as a way to more sustainable and effective environmental policy. In Slovakia best practice knowledge on shaping and implementing participatory processes is scarce. The main aim of the article is to assess the role of various stakeholders in the processes of participatory and network governance in urban forests in Slovakia. Based on selected case studies critical factors of success or failure in urban forestry at local level were identified. The methodological approach consisted of combination of multiple research methods. The main data sources for the qualitative part were expert structural interviews and complemented by desk study of relevant scientific literature, strategic documents, and personal observation and own findings from previous research projects on public participation. At national and regional levels open, continuous and initiatively functioning network is present and influences decision making. The result of the cooperation among various stakeholders at the local level most frequently takes the form of positive experience sharing from the implementation of community and civic projects, but it can also be beneficial to promote alternative proposals in strategic documents and development plans. In Slovakia, companies of municipal forests organize participatory processes in collaboration with local self-government, local and regional state government, nature conservation agencies, community activists and NGOs and enhance participation at regional and local level. The results thus show that difference between success and failure in many participatory processes is often unclear especially if a large number of stakeholders take part in the activities and their interests might differ. The crucial factor for the success or failure of the complex participatory process is to ensure the sustainability of the achieved goal or result.
Allusions to the “problem of metropolitan government” are often made in characterizing the difficulties supposed to arise because a metropolitan region is a legal non-entity. From this point of view, the people of a metropolitan region have no general instrumentality of government available to deal directly with the range of problems which they share in common. Rather there is a multiplicity of federal and state governmental agencies, counties, cities, and special districts that govern within a metropolitan region.
This view assumes that the multiplicity of political units in a metropolitan area is essentially a pathological phenomenon. The diagnosis asserts that there are too many governments and not enough government. The symptoms are described as “duplication of functions” and “overlapping jurisdictions.” Autonomous units of government, acting in their own behalf, are considered incapable of resolving the diverse problems of the wider metropolitan community. The political topography of the metropolis is called a “crazy-quilt pattern” and its organization is said to be an “organized chaos.” The prescription is reorganization into larger units—to provide “a general metropolitan framework” for gathering up the various functions of government. A political system with a single dominant center for making decisions is viewed as the ideal model for the organization of metropolitan government. “Gargantua” is one name for it.
Slow growth following transplanting is characteristic of the establishment period, which has been studied for many years. Most of this work, however, has been conducted on trees transplanted in nurseries or favorable growing sites. In urban areas, many trees are transplanted into more challenging growing conditions, and very few studies have investigated establishment period of such trees. We analyzed ten years of transplanting records for the metropolitan Boston, MA, USA area to determine the establishment period of three species commonly planted as street trees {hedge maple [Acer campestre L.], London planetree [Platanus x acerifolia (Ait.) Willd.], and red oak [Quercus rubra L.]}. Using piecewise linear regression, we determined the “break point,” the intersection of two lines fitted to a scatter plot of caliper versus years after transplanting. The break point indicates the number of years after transplanting at which growth rate increases—the establishment period. We also analyzed whether site factors affected stem caliper. Establishment period varied among species: 2.1 years, 4.0 years, and 5.9 years for red oak, London planetree, and hedge maple, respectively. Site factors variably affected stem caliper of different species. Stem caliper of London planetree and red oak increased with greater sidewalk cut-out area. Tree grates in sidewalk cut-outs adversely affected stem caliper of London planetree. Our results can help practitioners manage street trees in the northeastern United States, but more work on trees transplanted in urban areas is necessary to understand the initial post-transplant growth of street trees.
A regional urban forestry initiative, the Portland - Vancouver Metropolitan Regional Urban Forestry Strategy, was recently created in the Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington region of the United States. To inform the development of this initiative, a needs assessment survey was sent to community officials and program managers in the 30 cities and four counties in the Portland - Vancouver region. The survey sought to identify attitudes and practices in urban forestry, and determine program needs, barriers, and priorities. Despite both community officials and program managers expressing an avid interest in implementing and expanding tree programs, difficulty exists in growing programs due to issues such as inadequate funding and lack of political or public support. Increased community education and the creation or revision of urban forest management plans and tree related ordinances were some of the highest reported priorities for jurisdictions. Survey results will serve to increase the success of this initiative and contribute to professional knowledge and urban forestry activities occurring in the region and across the country. Recommendations for future outreach can also be utilized by urban forest managers and natural resource professionals to improve urban tree programs and services offered in the Portland - Vancouver region.
Public, private, and non-profit entities are increasingly engaged in greening post-industrial landscapes in an effort to achieve a broad array of aesthetic, infrastructure, recreational, ecological, and economic development objectives at various scales. Despite this growing level of interest, however, these projects continue to face numerous challenges related to financing, land acquisition, soil contamination, and concern regarding long-term maintenance, just to name a few. This paper begins with an overview of the “nature” of greening activity that has taken place in the USA and Canada and then focuses on three case studies – Elmhurst Park New York City, South Waterfront Portland, and Menomonee Valley Milwaukee – in order to illustrate the planning processes involved in their remediation and development. Key lessons are then drawn, with a particular emphasis on the growing need to attract buy-in and funding by linking greening with other forms of development and broader urban sustainability initiatives.
How do stewardship groups contribute to the management of urban ecosystem services? In this paper, we integrate the research on environmental stewardship with the social-ecological systems literature to explain how stewardship groups serve as bridge organizations between public agencies and civic organizations, working across scales and sectors to build the flexible and multi-scaled capacity needed to manage complex urban ecosystems. Analyzing data collected from a survey of stewardship groups in New York City, combined with open-ended semi-structured interviews with representatives from the most connected civic "hub" organizations, we use a mixed-method approach to understand the specific activities of bridge organizations in the process of preserving local ecosystem services. This paper concludes that the role of bridge organizations in the management of urban ecosystem services in New York City is increasing, that these groups have a specific bi-modal role in the network, and that an initial presence of heterarchic organizational relations was crucial in their development. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of these results.
Urban ecosystem services are crucial for human well-being and the livability of cities. A central challenge for sustaining ecosystem services lies in addressing scale mismatches between ecological processes on one hand, and social processes of governance on the other. This article synthesizes a set of case studies from urban green areas in Stockholm, Sweden-allotment gardens, urban parks, cemeteries and protected areas-and discusses how governmental agencies and civil society groups engaged in urban green area management can be linked through social networks so as to better match spatial scales of ecosystem processes. The article develops a framework that combines ecological scales with social network structure, with the latter being taken as the patterns of interaction between actor groups. Based on this framework, the article (1) assesses current ecosystem governance, and (2) develops a theoretical understanding of how social network structure influences ecosystem governance and how certain actors can work as agents to promote beneficial network structures. The main results show that the mesoscale of what is conceptualized as city scale green networks (i.e., functionally interconnected local green areas) is not addressed by any actor in Stockholm, and that the management practices of civil society groups engaged in local ecosystem management play a crucial but neglected role in upholding ecosystem services. The article proposes an alternative network structure and discusses the role of midscale managers (for improving ecological functioning) and scale-crossing brokers (engaged in practices to connect actors across ecological scales). Dilemmas, strategies, and practices for establishing this governance system are discussed.
Urban Heat Islands (UHI) are urban and suburban areas with elevated surface and air temperatures relative to surrounding rural areas. This study combines variables from the remote sensing and urban climatology publications to explain UHI intensity in eight Chicago neighborhoods. During the summer of 2010, we collected air temperature measurements within an urban block in each neighborhood. Consistent with remote sensing research that measures surface temperature, the predictors of elevated nighttime air temperatures were land cover variables. At 2 a.m., the urban block's percentages of impervious surface and tree canopy explained 68% of the variation in air temperature. At 2 a.m., the other physical measures of urban canyon and street orientation were not significant. At 2 a.m. during extreme heat events, the urban block's percentages of impervious surface and tree canopy explained 91% of the variation in air temperature. At 4 p.m., the only significant explanatory variable was distance to industrial sites and this explained 26% of the variation in air temperature. At 4 p.m. during extreme heat events, there were no significant predictors. We believe this research illustrates the importance of differentiating time of day for residential and non-residential areas in UHI mitigation efforts and the need to include waste heat in future UHI investigations.