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Innovative urban forestry governance in

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Article in Environmental Research · February 2018

DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2017.11.005

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 Environmental Research 161 (2018) 158–167

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Environmental Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/envres

Innovative urban forestry governance in Melbourne?: Investigating “green MARK

placemaking” as a nature-based solution
⁎
Natalie Marie Gulsruda, , Kelly Hertzogb, Ian Shearsc
a
University of Copenhagen, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Rolighedsvej 23, 1958 Frederiksberg, Denmark
b
Urban Forester, City of Melbourne, 120 Swanston Street, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia
c
Manager of Urban Sustainability, City of Melbourne, 120 Swanston Street, Melbourne VIC 3004, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A nature-based approach to climate resilience aims to challenge and re-frame conventional environmental
Urban green infrastructure management methods by refocusing solutions from technological strategies to socio-ecological principles such as
Community engagement human well-being and community-based governance models, thereby improving and legitimizing the delivery of
Nature-based solutions ecosystem services (ES). There are, however, many challenges to applying a socio-ecological agenda to urban
Urban climate resilience
climate resilience and thereby re-framing ES delivery as community and people focused, a knowledge gap ex-
tensively outlined in the environmental governance literature. In this paper, we aim to contribute to this re-
assesment of urban environmental governance by examining the City of Melbourne's approach to urban re-
naturing governance from a place-based perspective. Here we focus on the city's internationally-acclaimed urban
forest strategy (UFS), investigating how and to which extent the governance arrangements embedded within the
UFS draw strength from diverse perspectives and allow for institutional arrangements that support “situated”
reflexive decision making and co-creation. We find that Melbourne's UFS governance process fosters green
placemaking by re-focusing climate adaptation solutions from technological strategies to situated socio-ecolo-
gical principles such as human well-being and community-based decision making. In this sense, this case pro-
vides valuable insight for the broader UGI governance field regarding the opportunities and challenges asso-
ciated with a socio-cultural approach to urban re-naturing and ES delivery.

1. Introduction Kabisch et al., 2016a). A nature-based approach to climate resilience

There is an increasing global focus on “re-naturing” urban areas by
developing urban green spaces such as parks and forests in post-in-
dustrial cities in response to the challenges of attainting urban resi-
lience and environmental sustainability (Lawrence et al., 2013). This is
especially pertinent in light of the severe weather patterns and disasters
associated with climate change (Gao et al., 2015). Cities such as New
York and Singapore have adopted an urban green infrastructure (UGI)
approach to climate mitigation to combat the problems associated with
urban heat waves, urban floods and to achieve overall socio-economic
resilience by delivering ecosystem services (ES) (City of New York,
2013; Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and Ministry of
National Development, 2015). A UGI planning approach links green
spaces and built systems designed to deliver a robust and multi-func-
tional urban fabric to support diverse ES such as climate amelioration,
flood protection, and biodiversity (Chapin et al., 2008; Davies et al.,
2015). Recent focus has framed a UGI planning approach as a “nature-
based solution” to urban climate resilience (Eggermont et al., 2015;
aims to challenge and re-frame conventional environmental manage-
ment methods by refocusing solutions from technological strategies to
socio-ecological principles such as human well-being and community-
based governance models, thereby improving and legitimizing the de-
livery of ES (European Commission, 2015; Kabisch et al., 2016a).
There are, however, many challenges to applying a socio-ecological
agenda to urban climate resilience and thereby re-framing ES delivery
as community and people focused. While resilience thinking, as re-
presented by an urban green infrastructure approach to climate miti-
gation, offers a dynamic and holistic approach to human and environ-
mental change, it problematically assumes that social and ecological
dynamics can be modeled similarly, and thereby can mask the possi-
bility to ask important questions about the role of power and culture in
the adaptive capacity of green infrastructure and delivery of ES (Buizer
et al., 2016; Cote and Nightingale, 2012:475). Several have pointed to
the lack of “translation” of ES from scientific assessments to local
governance and community contexts, whereby urban greening cam-
paigns fail to deliver ecosystem services to a community, but instead are

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: nagu@ign.ku.dk (N.M. Gulsrud), Kelly.Hertzog@melbourne.vic.gov.au (K. Hertzog), Ian.Shears@melbourne.vic.gov.au (I. Shears).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2017.11.005
Received 22 December 2016; Received in revised form 31 October 2017; Accepted 1 November 2017
0013-9351/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
N.M. Gulsrud et al.
perceived as harbingers of “environmental bads” (Anguelovski,
2016:25; Buizer et al., 2016; McPhearson et al., 2016). Cases from di-
verse cities have shown how the economic imperative of delivering
ecosystem services through urban greening campaigns has raised issues
of “ecological gentrification” whereby so-called revitalization invest-
ments in urban greening in run down areas have led to raised land
values and the displacement of community members (Checker, 2011;
Dooling, 2009; Safransky, 2014). Along this line, there are many ex-
amples of the overly “technocratic” tendencies of an ecological focus in
urban re-naturing, revealing the heavily-contested nature of large-scale
tree planting campaigns and the transformation of post-industrial
spaces into parks (Gulsrud and Ooi, 2014; McKendry and Janos, 2014).
Further studies show that ethno-cultural preferences and a lack of
“sense of belonging” impact the distribution of cultural ecosystem
services in UGI planning raising the question of which services are
provided through ecological networks and for whom? (Byrne, 2012;
Wolch et al., 2014). This implies a lack of local socio-cultural context in
urban environmental governance, management, and planning, a
knowledge gap highlighted by Kabisch et al. (2016) in their assessment
of a how a nature-based solutions approach to climate resilience could
impact environmental governance.
Scholars have accordingly called for a re-assessment of urban en-
vironmental governance to fill this knowledge gap, moving from a
scientific and technocratic “view from nowhere” to an enriched socio-
cultural view that is deeply place-based (Buizer et al., 2016;
Frantzeskaki and Kabisch, 2016; Haraway, 1992; Williams, 2014:74).
Tuan (1977) illustrates how a place-based approach to inquiry allows
for consideration of the dynamic human emotions and relationships
involved in individual's and group attachment to a specific location or
place. Williams (2014) demonstrates how the act of placemaking can
mediate contested social practices and institutional arrangements
creating space for competing and diverse identity claims. Buizer et al.
(2016) suggest that a place-based approach to UGI planning and ES
delivery could contextualize and shed light on new and reflexive plat-
forms for environmental governance, allowing for diverse and con-
flicting accounts of urban nature values and claims to belonging. Cote
and Nightingale (2012:482) also appeal for a “situated” approach to
resilience by conceptualizing local knowledge as a “process, performed
in the everyday” thereby challenging the homogenization of local
knowledge frequently modeled into socio-ecological systems. In this
sense, a place-based approach to urban climate resilience could provide
a rich socio-cultural account of UGI planning by re-framing and med-
iating understandings of ES delivery through processes in which local
citizens iteratively create and recreate the green landscapes in which
they live.
This paper aims to contribute to this re-assesement of urban en-
vironmental governance by examining the City of Melbourne's ap-
proach to urban re-naturing governance from a place-based perspec-
tive. Here we focus on the city's internationally-acclaimed urban forest
strategy (UFS), investigating how and to which extent the governance
arrangements embedded within the UFS draw strength from diverse
perspectives and allow for institutional arrangements that support “si-
tuated” reflexive decision making and co-creation (Buizer et al., 2016;
Cote and Nightingale, 2012; Edge and McAllister, 2009; Raymond et al.,
2010). The City of Melbourne is an appropriate case for this analysis as
it represents an opportunity to reveal and analyze new and or unique
phenomenon within the context of nature-based solutions to climate
resilience and ES delivery through urban re-naturing. The city of Mel-
bourne is facing three substantial challenges: climate change, popula-
tion growth and urban heating which threaten to undermine the quality
of life and wellness of city residents and ravage its urban tree popula-
tion (City of Melbourne, 2012a). At the same time, the City of Mel-
bourne has been recognized by its peer-city-leaders in the C40 Cities
Climate Leadership Group and academics alike as a fore-runner city
with an exemplary and ambitious approach to urban re-naturing for
climate resilience including extensive citizen engagement efforts
159
Environmental Research 161 (2018) 158–167
(Beatley and Newman, 2009; Ferguson et al., 2013; Siemens, 2014).
The case of Melbourne can, therefore, be situated in a broader context
of global cities seeking ecological solutions to climate resilience. Ana-
lyzing the governance of Melbourne's UFS allows for revelatory insight
into the city's community-based approach to environmental problem
solving and management (Yin, 1989). We end the paper by discussing
the implications of the Melbourne case for the broader UGI governance
context and conclude by assessing green placemaking seen from a
nature- based approach to climate resilience.
2. Operationalizing a place-based approach to environmental
governance
2.1. Theoretical frame
The soci-cultural lens we introduce in this paper is a place-based or
“situated” approach to environmental governance (Cote and
Nightingale, 2012:482) whereby the governing of UGI implementation
and subsequent ES delivery allows for contested, diverse, and ever-
changing place attachment values (Williams, 2014). The governance of
UGI implementation and ES delivery can be understood as the collec-
tive steering of decision-making involved in the control and manage-
ment of physically and functionally interconnected networks of green
spaces, ranging from woodlands and parks to community gardens
(Lovell and Taylor, 2013; Wurzel et al., 2013). Idealized arrangements
of UGI governance span the range of hierarchical to reflexive en-
vironmental maneuvering, whereby “green statism” calls for a tightly
state-controlled implementation of UGI and delivery of ES,“eco-man-
agerialism” calls for restricted cooperation between the state and non-
state actors such as citizens and NGOS, and “reflexive” advocates for
the broad dispersion of power between expert and non-expert actors
and transdisciplinary networks (Buizer et al., 2016; Luke, 2009)(Fig. 1).
Local and reflexive knowledge is understood in this context as the
pluralistic and varied positions of awareness and meaning associated
with a place and is informed by daily interactions based on concrete
activities (Buizer et al., 2016; Cote and Nightingale, 2012; Williams,
2014).
Williams (2014:75) helps us understand how varied positionings of
socio-cultural “awareness, knowledge and meaning” are conceptualized
in understandings of place and offers a powerful framework of how
diverse readings of place meaning can be situated in a UGI governance
context (Fig. 2). According to Williams, place-based discourses typically
identified in UGI governance can be classified according to various
ontological and epsitemological assumptions moving from an inherent
or objective shared understanding of place to a deeply-personal and
subjective conception of place (Table 1). The first two surface mean-
ings, “inherent” and “instrumental” are the layers of place generally
legitimzed in UGI governance processes while “socio-cultural” and
“identity-expressive” concepts of place are frequently neglected in UGI
policy due to the difficulty of modeling and managing intangible and
personal knowledge (Buizer et al., 2016; Edge and McAllister, 2009;
Williams, 2014).
Analyzing a UGI governance process through a place-based lens
raises questions regarding how much power and agency citizens’ var-
ious place-based perspectives are granted within a given policy process
and thus invites an inquiry into how local knowledge is conceptualized
and deliberated through nested social and political processes. This
perspective also provides necessary insight into the lessons learned
Fig. 1. Continuum of idealized UGI governance arrangements (adapted from Arnouts
et al. (2012) and based on Luke (2009) and Buizer et al. (2016)).
N.M. Gulsrud et al. Environmental Research 161 (2018) 158–167

predicted to come under increasing pressure due to climate change

(City of Melbourne, 2017b). The population of the municipality is ex-
pected to double over the next 20 years placing increased pressure on
the built environment, including open spaces, urban services, and the
people of the city (City of Melbourne, 2017b).

2.3. Methodological approach

This research takes a qualitative single- case study approach (Yin,

Fig. 2. Layers of place meaning adapted from Williams, 2014.
through the applied case of Melbourne's UFS, potentially illustrating
how ES delivery can be re-framed as community and people focused.
2.2. Case site
Melbourne is located in south-eastern Australia, on the northern-
most point of Port Philip Bay along the banks of the Yarra River. The
greater metropolitan Melbourne region comprises 31 municipalities,
spanning 9990.5 km2, with a rapidly growing population of approxi-
mately 4.7 million inhabitants (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016).
The focus of this case study is the City of Melbourne municipality,
covering 37.7 km2 with a residential population of 143,000 and an
average daily user group of 900, 000 workers, students, and visitors
(City of Melbourne, 2017a) (Fig. 3). City residents are relatively young
in age, with more than half of the population (52%) between the age of
20–34 years, a result strongly influenced by the large population of
international and Australian students living in the city. Approximately
48% of Melbournians have international origins, meaning they are
foreign born, and Mandarin is the most commonly spoken second lan-
guage within city limits (City of Melbourne, 2017a). The City of Mel-
bourne municipality is comprised of a city center and a number of inner
districts, each with its own distinctive character and with different
businesses, dwellings and communities living and working there. The
City of Melbourne is known as Australia's “garden city” and has 486 ha
of parkland and approximately 70,000 publicly owned trees which are
1989), involving the analysis of primary and secondary data to evaluate
Melbourne's governing of urban-renaturing. We chose to work with a
single case due to Melbourne's status as an “exemplary” city for eco-
logical and community-based approaches to climate resilience
(Siemens, 2014). The study is revelatory in its design as we aim to
uncover and analyze new and or unique phenomenon regarding “si-
tuated” nature-based solutions to climate resilience and ES delivery that
can then be generalized to a broader UGI governance context (Yin,
1989). Here we take a layered approach (Buijs et al., 2016a) to our
research, building up our case study through a nested accounting of
diverse perspectives starting with a broader UGI policy context and
moving towards a more socio-cultural perspective including the view
points of politicians, practitioners, and citizens involved in and im-
pacted by the UFS (Fig. 4). We use these perspectives to frame and
assess place-based values, assumptions, and normative approaches to
Melbourne's urban re-naturing governance (Buizer et al., 2016; Cote
and Nightingale, 2012; Popa et al., 2014; Williams, 2014). We take this
approach in order to uncover diverse and contested claims to green
identity and evaluate Melbourne's capacity to integrate pluralistic si-
tuated knowledge into their UGI governance process.
2.4. data collection and analysis
Primary and secondary data for this study was gathered from 2010
to 2017 (Table 2). Layer 1 data was gathered through a desk study of
policy documents relating to Melbourne's UGI governance approach
over time. Focus was placed on a broad understanding of governance
arrangements and actors involved in the policy arena. This desk study
was complimented by an extensive literature review of peer-reviewed
articles in environmental policy and governance, urban forestry and
urban greening, urban green infrastructure, geography, and political
science relating to Melbourne and other global city case studies. The
policy documents were then reviewed in the context of the literature
and data was analyzed with a governance arrangements approach
outlined in Fig. 1 as defined by Arnouts et al. (2012), Buizer et al.
(2016), Luke (2009).
Layer 2 and layer 3 data was gathered through a combined ap-
proach of in-person interviews and a continued desk study of policy

Table 1
Examples of place meaning based on (Williams, 2014).

Varied dimensions of place meaning in UGI governance from generalizable and shared to contextual and personal

Inherent Instrumental Socio-cultural Identity-expressive

A place identity that is collectively shared
and understood by all, such as a city's
reputation as a green, “garden city”
due to its tree-lined boulevards and
parks as outlined in green city
branding literature (Gulsrud et al.,
2013).
A place identity that refers to the objective
needs all individuals might have in any
city, such as clean air and clean water, and
is potentially generalizable across similar
landscapes and bio-regions as reflected in
discourses of ecosystem services (Nowak
and Dwyer, 2007).
A perspective on place that refers to the
contested and diverse expectations and
norms various groups and cultures in an
urban populace ascribe to landscape
attachment. These norms are socially and
culturally constructed by historical,
sociological and geographical aspects of
day- to day life. Wolch et al. (2014)
and Williams (2014:77) raise the example
that neighborhood parks can serve as social
“territories” of ethnic group identities
where some feel a sense of belonging and
others can feel excluded.
An approach to place that taps into the
intangible, emotional, and spiritual
meanings ascribed by individuals to a
place which give individuals a sense of
self and an attachment to place. An
example could be a citizen's strong
attachment to an individual street tree as
illustrated by Lo and Jim (2015).

160
N.M. Gulsrud et al.
Fig. 4. A layered approach to investigating UGI governance, moving from the broad to
the focused perspective.
documents relating directly to the UFS. Interviews (10) were conducted
with employees of the City of Melbourne sustainable urban landscapes
division and members of the city council active in the environmental
policy realm. In 2011 the interviews (4) were semi-structured with the
aim to better understand UGI governance arrangements and uncover
normative assumptions associated with ecological approaches to urban
re-naturing and citizen engagement. In 2016 interviews (6) were
structured to investigate 1) drivers and challenges involved with com-
munity engagement and co-creation and 2) the capacity for shared
learning and diverse notions of landscape and place in the UFS. Policy
documents concerning the UFS were collected and analyzed fwith focus
on the inherent and instrumental descriptions of place as well as the
allocation of power and resources between actors.
Layer 4 data was gathered by municipal employees from 2011 to
2017 drawing on citizen input from municipality-led community
workshops on UFS initiatives (6), e-governance exchanges from the
municipal digital platform Urban Forest Visual (100 e-mails), social
media exchanges between citizens on blogs and chat forums (8), and
newspaper editorials concerning citizen perspectives on urban trees and
the UFS (10). Data from community workshops draws on input from
approximately 920 citizens and was gathered and analyzed based on co-
161
Environmental Research 161 (2018) 158–167
Fig. 3. Contextualizing the City of Melbourne in a
local, regional, and national scale.
defined (municipal and citizen) ambitions for the workshop. For ex-
ample, citizen input data from the neighborhood workshops for the
Melbourne Urban Forest Precinct Plans was categorized based on ci-
tizen driven concepts such as “places we value,” “important land-
scapes,” “hopes for the future,” “locations for more greening,” and
municipal driven concepts such as the overall vision for the neighbor-
hood's urban forest, community preferences for vegetation color and
shapes, tree species, and tree location. Neighborhood children were also
consulted in the process, awarding prizes to their favorite photos of
diverse landscapes with high and or low canopy trees in various colors
and shapes. E-governance exchange data consisted of emails sent from
citizens to 70,000 geo-tagged municipal trees in Melbourne. Data was
gathered between 2013 and 2015 and during this time over 3000
emails were sent to trees. Of the 3000 emails, municipal officers ran-
domly chose 100 emails and categorized them based on a citizen's re-
action(s) to a tree. Categories identified included adoration, nostalgia,
concerns at tree decline and recognition of loss, humor, poetry and art,
grief, and curiosity. Social media exchanges were gathered by searching
for key phrases such as “Melbourne Urban Forest Strategy,” “save the
elms Melbourne,” “citizen forester Melbourne,” “natives vs. exotics
Melbourne,” and “tree removal Melbourne.” Searches were conducted
to gague citizen reactions to UFS initiatives and social learning between
citizens (Linders, 2012). Similarly newspaper articles and editorials
were gathered to gague citizen opinion on the UFS and evaluate shifts
in citizen values and assumptions over the initial implementation
period of the UFS. Layer 4 data was analyzed in a descriptive manner
using Williams' (2014) layers of place meaning framework with the aim
to identify how citizens related to place and landscape from an inherent
to an identity expressive level. Additionally data was analyzed de-
scriptively to evaluate citizen engagement and ownership over shared
learning and co-creation (Buizer et al., 2016; Cote and Nightingale,
2012).
Together these data layers were analyzed as a nested and on-going
political and socio-cultural process. Emphasis was placed on identifying
converging place-based narratives regarding Melbourne's UGI govern-
ance and these narratives were then related to Williams' (2014) layers
of place meaning framework (Hajer, 2002). All data was triangulated
and verified by peer-reviewed literature (Yin, 1989). This was done to
investigate how the nested governance arrangements embedded within
the UFS engage in and support reflexive decision making and co-crea-
tion.
N.M. Gulsrud et al. Environmental Research 161 (2018) 158–167

Table 2
Case study data sources sorted by data layer.

Level 1 data Level 2 data Level 3 data Level 4 data

General UGI policy documents UFS policy documents (13) Relevant community consultation reports Community engagement
(10) (4) workshops (6) participants (920)

Melbourne City Council: Council
Plan 2013 − 2017
Melbourne City Council: Council
Plan 2017 − 2021
City of Melbourne 10 year
Financial Plan 2015 − 2025
Climate Adaptation Strategy 2009
Open Space Strategy 2012
Urban Forest Strategy 2012
Total Watermark City as a
Catchment 2014
Growing Green Guide 2014
Climate Adaptation Strategy 2017
Nature in the City Strategy 2017
Urban Forest Strategy 2012
Urban Forest Precinct Plans 2013 − 2023
Melbourne Urban Forest Visual
The City of Melbourne's Future Urban Forest:
Identifying vulnerability to future temperatures
2016
2011 Interviews (4)
(3) City of Melbourne employees from the division
of sustainable urban landscapes
(1) Melbourne City Council member
Community Consultation Report: City of
Melbourne Draft Urban Forest Strategy 2012
Unleashing the potential of nature in
Melbourne: the community workshop report
2015
City of Melbourne Aboriginal Heritage Action
Plan 2015 – 2018
Future Melbourne 2026 bringing your ideas
together
2016 interviews (6)
(4) City of Melbourne employees from the
division of sustainable urban landscapes
(2) city council members
Carlton consultation results March
2013
South Yarra consultation results May
2013
Central City consultation results
2013
North & West Melbourne
consultation results December 2013
Docklands consultation results March
2014
Kensington consultation results April
2014
E-governance exchanges (100)
Social media articles (8)
Newspaper articles (10)

3. Results
3.1. Layer 1: The UGI governance context from inherent to instrumental
representations of green place identity
The City of Melbourne has a clear inherent and instrumental green
place identity supported by a balance of eco-managerialist and reflexive
UGI governance arrangements. Colonial founders of Melbourne pro-
moted the city as a green and livable”garden city.” Nineteenth-century
British colonials drastically altered the landscape of Melbourne, an
important meeting place for many Aboriginal tribes (Ives et al., 2013).
Landscape revisions at the time included planting vast stands of non-
native European tree species to shade the sun-drenched alleys of Mel-
bourne and provide green public spaces in a rapidly developing urban
area (City of Melbourne, 2012a). This green, garden city reputation has
carried over into current times as since 2010 the Melbourne City
Council has adapted an ecosystem-based approach to climate adapta-
tion to improve livability and resilience at the cost of over 60 million
Australian dollars (City of Melbourne, 2015, 2013a; Melbourne City
Council, 2017). Melbourne's approach focuses on a host of inter-linking
UGI strategies to increase storm-water harvesting and urban green
space as well as enhancing biodiversity and supporting the greening of
buildings with green roofs, walls, and facades (City of Melbourne,
2017b, 2017c, 2014a, 2012a, 2012b). These strategies are set in place
to secure the quality and resilience of the urban fabric against threats of
climate change, population growth, and urban heating with the overall
goal of cooling Melbourne by 4 °C. Melbourne's green reputation is
widely acknowledged in an international context. Since 2011, Mel-
bourne has been ranked annually as the most “livable” city in the world
by the Economist Intelligence Unit (Eiu, 2016), an entrepreneurial
group that assesses cities based on economic stability indicators asso-
ciated with environment, infrastructure, health care, culture, education
and stability (Krueger and Gibbs, 2007). Additionally, scholars herald
Melbourne as a best practice case study in green urbanism and climate
adaptation, citing the city's progressive and forward thinking UGI
governance practices (Beatley and Newman, 2009; Ferguson et al.,
2013; Leeuwen, 2017)
Reflexive co-governance is critical to the success of Melbourne's UGI
regime as they aim to connect citizens with nature to foster social re-
silience, wellbeing, and a sense of stewardship over the natural en-
vironment (City of Melbourne, 2017b). Citizens played an active role in
politicizing the link between community health, wellness, and resilient
ecosystems. Between 1995 and 2009, The City of Melbourne suffered
extreme hot weather resulting in drought, water shortage, and heat
waves that killed several hundred people, elevating extreme heat to the
number one cause of weather-related deaths in urbanized Australia
(Krafft and Fryd, 2016). These same trends threatened the long-term
health of the city's extensive urban forest (Kendal et al., 2012). The
immediate response of state and city leaders was to drastically reduce
the irrigation of the city's urban forest and remove a large percentage of
the city-owned street trees, a plan which would have reduced the re-
silience of Melbourne's urban green infrastructure and capacity for the
delivery of much needed climate mitigating ecosystem services (City of
Melbourne, 2011a). But city officials, moved by community concerns
surrounding the drought-ridden and degraded state of the urban land-
scape, specifically the urban trees, prompted a long-term strategic
process focused on community wellness and urban landscape resilience
(City of Melbourne, 2011a). More recently citizens have been engaged
in contributing visions and concrete suggestions for Melbourne's green
future in UGI co-governance forums such as the on-line Participate
Melbourne forum, pop-up face-to-face-engagement sessions across the
city, stakeholder workshops and target discussion groups (City of
Melbourne, 2016a). The City of Melbourne 10 Year Financial Plan for
2015–2025 was heavily influenced by a “People's Panel” made up of
diverse and representative citizens of Melbourne, including residents,
businesses, and students, who voted in 2014 that Melbourne in 2025
should be “one of the world's most livable cities,” and should be “re-
cognized internationally for its successes in sustainability and response
to climate change”(City of Melbourne, 2015, 2014b).
3.2. Layer 2: The UFS as case – balancing eco-managerialism with reflexive
UGI governance
The UFS is a central strategy in Melbourne's ecosystem-based ap-
proach to climate adaptation and underpins the city's aim to create
healthy ecosystems for people and nature. Launched in 2012, the
strategy builds off of the Melbourne Open Space Strategy to increase
community wellness and resilience by increasing the amount and
quality of the city's urban green infrastructure. The UFS aims to double
Melbourne's existing tree canopy cover of 20–40% over the next 20
years, while increasing the diversity of the urban tree stock (City of
Melbourne, 2012a). Strategy implementation relies on a balance of
technical expertise and situated citizen knowledge by drawing actively
on “the community's sense of place and capacity for change… to ensure

162
N.M. Gulsrud et al.
Fig. 5. The City of Melbourne's holistic principles in the UFS.
a dynamic approach in managing Melbourne's urban forest” (City of
Melbourne, 2012:35). Since the release of the UFS, The City of Mel-
bourne has planted approximately 12,000 trees to date, the majority in
collaboration with citizens (City of Melbourne, 2016b). The strategy
has received wide-spread support from citizens including a vote of
confidence to secure Council funding for the next ten years by the City
of Melbourne People's Panel (City of Melbourne, 2015). The UFS out-
lines a scientifically-vetted long-term process to re-nature the city with
a diverse selection of urban trees and open space for and with the ci-
tizens, combining elements of an eco-managerialist governance ar-
rangement with an open and reflexive co-governance approach. Mel-
bourne's USF situates the municipality's urban forest as a critical
infrastructural element to maintain the health and livability of Mel-
bourne (Fig. 5).
3.3. Layer 3: drivers and challenges of reflexive governance
A central driver and challenge of UFS implementation and co-gov-
ernance with citizens was the community's divisive narrative of green
heritage, specifically strong preferences for either native Australian or
exotic trees. The strategy included extensive plans for tree removal,
tree-planting, and diversification of tree species and citizens were
deeply divided over which trees should receive priority in the UFS (City
of Melbourne, 2011a; Krafft and Fryd, 2016). In the face of drastic
water shortages in the mid-2000s, routine tree care in the urban tree
population turned into a “highly sensitive community issue” as Eur-
opean exotics such as Elm and Plane were removed at higher frequency
due to damage from the heat and drought and were replaced by Aus-
tralian natives such as Eucalypt (Lucas, 2006). Local “friends” groups
associated with neighborhood parks, such as Friends of Royal Park, and
or tree species, such as Friends of the Elms, forged coalitions to promote
their agendas and were skeptical regarding the motives behind the
municipality's tree management. The debate around natives vs. exotics
was so divisive that when the city planted exotic Planes, following
enthusiastic community debate, in the centrally-located Swanston
Street pedestrian corridor, rogue pro-native activists tore the trees out
at night (City of Melbourne, 2011).
The debate around landscape values in Melbourne was underlined
by broader challenges of inclusive community governance as the tra-
ditional friends groups dominated UFS community workshops while
other voices and perspectives were left unheard (City of Melbourne,
2016b, 2011a). In response the city made a significant effort to place
“previously dominant voices” into an “equal perspective” with voices
less frequently heard in community engagement forums (City of
Melbourne, 2016b). The municipality actively sought out the “silent
majority” by hosting local forums in neighborhood settings across the
city at varied times of the day and week in addition to on-line forums
for feedback. Youth were actively engaged in envisioning their local
urban landscapes through an art competition targeted at city schools
(City of Melbourne, 2012c). Citizen review councils for the UFS con-
sultation phase were composed of demographically representative
pannels (City of Melbourne, 2012c). These co-governance forums
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Environmental Research 161 (2018) 158–167
provided an opportunity for the City of Melbourne to pro-actively use
place-based story telling as a driver to engage individual citizens and
the community as a whole in a discussion regarding urban re-naturing
and climate resilience based in technical knowledge and local values
(City of Melbourne, 2016b, 2011b).
3.4. Layer 3: reflexive approaches to place-based social learning
The City of Melbourne developed in-person and on-line co-govern-
ance forums to create opportunities for reflexive and situated social
learning in initial phases of UFS implementation. Citizens were engaged
at the local level to update and revive neighborhood-scale strategies for
Melbourne's urban forest based on their own indicators such as sense of
place and future hopes for the neighborhood as well as municipal in-
dicators such as aesthetic preferences, streetscape design including
canopy cover preferences, and tree planting and removal strategies
(City of Melbourne, 2013b). For example, the neighborhood of East
Melbourne and Jolimont envisioned their local forest to be “harmo-
nious with heritage, diverse, richly layered with shape and seasonal
color, and provide ample habitat and shade” (City of Melbourne,
2013b:11). Whereby the adjoining neighborhood of South Yarra aimed
to have a “spectacular and engaging” urban forest where “canopies will
be light, and understory will provide habitat for native birds and bees”
(City of Melbourne, 2013c). Children actively contributed to these
neighborhood plans by selecting their favorite images of trees and
colors and or drawing neighborhood maps with favorite trees and
plants. In all, 10 urban forest precinct plans were developed for and
with citizens. City officials legitimised this knowledge, inviting citizens
to track the implementation progress of their own suggestions in the on-
line implementation guide, Urban Forest Visual (City of Melbourne,
2017d).
Social learning was facilitated on-line through a broader and more
visual engagement portal with the intent of engaging citizens in chal-
lenging discussions regarding the impacts of climate change on mana-
ging tree diversity and selection. Familiar and highly contested local
landscapes such as Fitzroy Garden and Royal Parade were visualised
both in their current state as lush green areas and as post-tree die off
landscapes with lawns denuded of trees and canopy-free street scapes
(City of Melbourne, 2012a). Another visual campaign drew on the
successive life stages of tree decline in an attempt to familiarise the
community with the visual distress cues associated with an ageing and
at-risk tree population (City of Melbourne, 2012a). A third visual
campaign portrayed the useful life expectancy of the entire municipal
urban forest as visual data points in varying shades of color with red
symbolizing a tree with less than 10 years to live, orange and yellow
showing in-between phases and blue and green symbolizing healthy
trees with 30–60 plus years of life remaining. The dominating red, or-
ange and yellow dots on the map swiftly communicated to citizens the
dire condition of their urban forest and created an opportunity to co-
create new understandings of local landscapes and green heritage.
These social learning campaigns proved to be enormously powerful in
terms of providing a common language or narrative for the community,
specifically the most vocal and skeptical citizen groups. At the end of
the pre-implementation citizen engagement period in March 2012, the
president of Friends of the Elms, wrote a letter to the editor of The Age,
a local newspaper, voicing the groups support for increased urban tree
diversity and giving public consent for the UFS (Grigg, 2012).
The on-line e-governance platform, Melbourne Urban Forest Visual,
provides a forum for the City of Melbourne to continuously co-create
narratives with citizens regarding the technical and social-cultural
stewardship of the urban forest. The digital platform engages citizens in
discussions of eco-system services through an invitation to explore the
“tree data” of the publically-managed urban forest (City of Melbourne,
2017d). This platform informatively guides viewers through the tech-
nical principles of the UFS visualizing in images and graphs, tree life
span, tree species diversity, and urban canopy cover with and without
N.M. Gulsrud et al.
tree plantings. All data on the platform is open to public purusal and
can be accessed via the City of Melbourne's open data portal. Another
essential feature of the platform is a digital map of Melbourne's pub-
lically-managed trees, symbol coded to indicate tree genus and color
coded to indicate tree health and life expectancy. Viewers can zoom in
to an individual tree data point and learn about the individual tree's
genus and life expectancy. Each tree is assigned a specific email ad-
dress, an idea that originated in the interest of citizens concerned about
at-risk trees and tree maintenance issues (City of Melbourne, 2016b).
Municipal employees have, however, been overwhelmed with “love
letters” to the trees from local citizens of all ages as well as visitors to
the city expressing their appreciation for and connection to Melbourne's
urban trees (City of Melbourne, 2016b).
A five-year old boy, named Oliver, writes:
“Hi tree, It's Oliver here (5 y/o). What color flowers do you have? How
old are you? How big are you? Do you have a bird nest? How much do
you weigh? I love the interactive map. You are a crymbia tree and come
from Western Australia (my mum says). From Oliver” (City of
Melbourne, 2016b).
The Melbourne Urban Forest Visual provides a digital context for
citizens to consistently engage in local place narratives and forge new
socio-cultural understandings associated with the urban forest.
3.5. Layer 4: fostering identity expressive green place-attachment
The City of Melbourne has actively worked to foster social resilience
through the UFS, engaging with individual citizens’ sense of place and
expert knowledge regarding their local green heritage and landscapes.
The municipality has viewed citizens as experts, or “citizen foresters,”
facilitating the training of interested citizens in urban tree care (City of
Melbourne, 2017b). One such activity has included genetic sampling of
Elm trees to evaluate resilience to pests and disease and mapping of
understory vegetation. Over 200 samples have been collected by citizen
foresters, connecting citizens to local biodiversity and their role in
protecting it. As one citizen forester, who identifies herself as an ex-
perienced horticulturalist reflects:
“The council has been working with the community and have organised a
group of volunteers called Citizen Foresters to help identify and collect
elm leaves in the Fitzroy Gardens. I went along and learnt a lot about
identifying elms. Gosh, have I been walking around all this time and not
noticed the differences?… Yes. It was a really great morning. First,
Amelia and David (one the City of Melbourne's arborists) taught us how
to distinguish the different elms features. It seems that a lot of what we
think are English Elms are actually Dutch Elms, that is Ulmus x hol-
landica” (Pullman, 2014).
Along these lines, citizens are sharing knowledge with each other
regarding the future development of Melbourne's urban forest. In May
2016, a citizen posted a video of a big tree being moved at Lincon
Square in central Melbourne. The individual followed up with an in-
formative post explaining that the tree, a Blue Atlas Cedar, was being
temporarily located up the block to allow for the excavation of an un-
derground water tank. An exchange between users of the site ensued
whereby citizens were teaching citizens about the principles and aims
of the UFS. As one user writes:
“Established trees in the city of Melbourne are valued at around $80,000
I believe, or there abouts. So when a developer wants to remove a tree to
help with construction they have to pay a bit to get that happening and
CoM organize a younger replacement (they are trying to diversify the
current species of trees within the cbd so drought and disease doesn't wipe
out every tree in the cbd at once)” (Brunswoo and drawnimo, 2016).
The Melbourne Urban Forest Visual has also provided an opportu-
nity for citizens to express extremely personal narratives regarding in-
dividual trees on the record with the municipality. A citizen named
164
Environmental Research 161 (2018) 158–167
Nick writes,
“Dearest Green Leaf Elm 1025301, I am so sad to learn that you, the first
magnificent thing I see upon exiting Parliament Station each morning, are
on the decline. Please know that you imbue my days with fresh happiness
right when I need it most, before I crawl into a fluorescent lit office to
trudge away most of my day. Thank you. I will endeavor to appreciate
you more in the years to come. Much love from your adoring friend,
Nick” (City of Melbourne, 2016b).
The City of Melbourne facilitates reflexive co-governance in the UFS
fostering daily opportunities for citizens to share and discuss personal
situated knowledge and attachment to urban trees and landscapes.
4. Discussion
This case reveals that the City of Melbourne is working with a
variety of UGI governance arrangements that facilitate reflexive deci-
sion making, the legitimation of situated local knowledge, and co-
production. Here initial research has shown that the UFS supports
multi-level and collaborative approaches to urban re-naturing, balan-
cing and linking objectives of biodiversity with those emphasizing
socio-ecological resilience (Buizer et al., 2016). These governance ar-
rangements support broad stakeholder involvement and draw upon
socio-cultural and identity expressive place-based narratives of local
landscapes fostering the rights and and responsibilities of citizens as
urban ecosystem managers (Buijs et al., 2016b; Fors et al., 2015;
Williams, 2014). Additionally UFS governance arrangements facilitate
knowledge co-production processes that legitimize diverse and con-
tested citizen knowledge of urban ecosystems (Cote and Nightingale,
2012; Frantzeskaki et al., 2016). Melbourne's UFS governance process
fosters green placemaking by re-focusing climate adaptation solutions
from technological strategies to situated socio-ecological principles
such as human well-being and community-based decision making. In
this sense, this case provides valuable insight for the broader UGI
governance field regarding the opportunities and challenges associated
with a socio-cultural approach to urban re-naturing and ES delivery.
4.1. Reflexive decision making as mosaic governance
Cities are increasingly becoming more socially and culturally di-
verse and this poses a challenge to the inclusive governance of UGI and
ES delivery (Buizer et al., 2016). Urban environmental governance
literature reveals the complexity associated with accounting for con-
tested social practices with competing and diverse identity claims to
belonging (Byrne, 2012; Williams, 2014). This is specifically pertinent
in urban re-naturing campaigns as city officials strive to connect people
with nature to facilitate social resilience and human wellbeing (Buijs
et al., 2016b; Raymond et al., 2016; van den Bosch and
Nieuwenhuijsen, 2017). We can then draw on elements of the colla-
borative governance approaches from the Melbourne UFS to discuss
opportunities of engaging in socio-cultural approaches to urban re-
naturing and ES delivery. In the UFS, Melbourne adopts a reflexive
governance platform to facilitate a context sensitive approach to UGI
planning and implementation accounting for diverse landscapes, com-
munity identities, and specific practices of active citizen groups (Buizer
et al., 2016; Cote and Nightingale, 2012; Vierikko et al., 2016). The
neighborhood precinct plans engage the deep and divisive socio-cul-
tural place meanings surrounding the aforestation of Melbourne, and
acknowledge the social and ecological identities of geographically di-
verse sections of the city. Working at a site-specific level allows local
authorities the opportunity to engage with voices often silenced by
dominant friends groups such as children, the elderly, and socio-eco-
nomic diverse populations, engendering environmental learning and a
greater sense of place (Bendt et al., 2013). The Urban Forest Visual
supports citizen co-management of UGI by giving them a platform for
social learning and engagement with challenging discussions regarding
N.M. Gulsrud et al.
the impact of climate change on the management of tree diversity. The
literature shows that digital governance can empower new and often
unheard voices, specifically youth and those unable to make meetings
(Akom et al., 2016). These situated governance approaches acknowl-
edge that there is not just one ideal combination of governance in-
struments but rather that optimal and resilient UGI planning is reliant
on what Buijs et al. (2016b) term a “mosaic governance” approach. Key
to this approach is coordination by local authorities that recognizes the
autonomy of the individual and their situated expertise in social-eco-
logical resilience (Buijs et al., 2016b; Cote and Nightingale, 2012).
4.2. Knowledge legitimation and co-production
Rapid urbanization and fluctuating climates are pressuring urban
green spaces and the subsequent delivery of ES (Gómez-Baggethun and
Barton, 2013; McPhearson et al., 2015). In order to support UGI plan-
ning and protect existing urban green spaces, planning and governance
approaches are needed that bridge different types of knowledge – from
expert to citizen – to engage broad public support while accounting for
competing value systems (Andersson et al., 2015; Cote and Nightingale,
2012; Frantzeskaki et al., 2016). Melbourne's approach to community-
based planning in the UFS illustrates the opportunities involved with
legitimating diverse forms and systems of ecological knowledge and
provides insight into novel forms of green co-creation. The neighbor-
hood-scale planning for the UFS brings transparency and openness to
the governance process (Crowe et al., 2016). Designing the future urban
forest in line with community aspirations and expectations fosters
adaptive co-management and knowledge sharing about urban ecosys-
tems (Fors et al., 2015; Frantzeskaki and Kabisch, 2016). The Mel-
bourne Urban Forest Visual further emphasizes citizens as co-managers
of the UFS as they are encouraged to interact with visualizations of the
risks and challenges associated with climate change and actively plan
for future tree plantings based on time and place-specific local pre-
ferences (Lange et al., 2013). E-governance exchanges with the city's
trees promote concerned citizens as environmental stewards and eco-
logical memory keepers (Andersson and Barthel, 2016) as their emo-
tional and personal emails to trees record and pass along biocultural
knowledge of specific trees to the municipality that could be critical to
future ecological restoration efforts (Colding and Barthel, 2013). The
Urban Forest Visual platform e-mail exchanges with trees legitimates
and celebrates diverse citizen perceptions and emotions attached to
urban nature (Tuan, 1977; Williams, 2014), an approach that falls in
line with the argumentation of Haraway (1992) and Williams (2014)
calling for a shift in UGI governance from a scientific and technocratic
“view from nowhere” to an enriched socio-cultural view that is deeply
place-based. This re-framing and mediating of ES delivery is especially
pertinent in urban re-naturing campaigns where planning processes
frequently fail to take into account diverse community values (Ordóñez-
Barona, 2017) and focus on technical outputs as opposed to community
empowerment (Buijs et al., 2016b; Lawrence and Ambrose-Oji, 2015).
165
Environmental Research 161 (2018) 158–167
Fig. 6. Schematic representation of the range of green place-
making approaches. The four types of place-attachments
(Williams, 2014) are differentiated based on the variety of place
meaning incorporated into UGI governance (x-axis), and in the
perception of ES, distribution of power to citizens, and variety of
green governance (y-axis). The four types of place attachment are
overlapping to represent the nested social and political tensions
linking the categories.
4.3. Situating green placemaking as a nature-based approach to climate
resilience
A nature-based approach to climate resilience aims to improve and
legitimizing the delivery of ES by refocusing solutions from technolo-
gical strategies to socio-ecological principles such as human well-being
and community-based governance models (European Commission,
2015; Kabisch et al., 2016). Results from this analysis demonstrate that
the City of Melbourne has achieved a nature-based solutions approach
to climate resilience by combining pluralistic place-based community
values associated with urban re-naturing to technical solutions asso-
ciated with UGI and ES delivery (Eggermont et al., 2015). Melbourne
has achieved this through symbolic and deliberative community en-
gagement including Type 1 and Type 2, or “inherent” and “instru-
mental,” place-based narratives of local landscape in the UFS govern-
ance process (Fig. 6). Additionally, Melbourne augments an eco-
managerialist approach to UGI implementation and ES delivery by ac-
tively engaging Type 3 and Type 4 understandings of place and urban
landscape, drawing on concrete and reflexive processes of social
learning and co-creation (Fig. 6) (Edge and McAllister, 2009; Buizer
et al., 2016). Melbourne's UFS governance process illustrates the nested
social and political typologies of green placemaking involved in urban
re-naturing and provides valuable insight regarding the opportunities
and challenges of integrating local knowledge into ecological decision
making.
5. Conclusion: green placemaking as a nature-based solution to
climate resilience
The results and analysis of this paper highlight the “synergies” and
“tradeoffs” between the integration of community-sourced and place-
based preferences of UGI governance and “utilitarian” ES delivery,
pointing to reflexive green placemaking as a successful model for robust
ES delivery and urban climate resilience supported by concrete ex-
amples of co-creation and social learning (Eggermont, 2015; Buizer
et al., 2016; Kabisch et al., 2016). This analysis suggests that a green
placemaking approach to UGI governance can successfully include
“other knowledge systems outside of modern science” such as local
place-based perspectives (Williams, 2014; Eggermont, 2015) and can
actively facilitate pluralistic views of landscape based in hybrid un-
derstandings of place (Fig. 6). In this regard, a green placemaking ap-
proach to UGI governance and climate resilience can be seen as in-
tegrating socio-cultural and scientific knowledge to successfully
promote and achieve higher-levels of urban biodiversity (Eggermont,
2015; Buizer et al., 2016; Kabisch et al., 2016). There are nested social
and political challenges and complexities associated with green place-
making as illustrated through the Melbourne case and the overlapping
rationalities of UGI governance represented in Fig. 6. Challenges of
ecological gentrification and institutionalised hierarchies of cultural
representation must be taken seriously by politicians, community
N.M. Gulsrud et al.
leaders, and academics alike and warrent in-depth future studies. Based
on this analysis, green placemaking should be seen as a nature-based
solution to urban climate resilience.
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