Surviving the City - Urban Forests for nature-based health and happiness
Rounding off the Urban Forestry Semester 2021, a series of exciting events were planned in Switzerland by ArboCityNet and the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment. Following the theme of ‘Surviving the city – Urban Forests for nature-based health and happiness‘, the final week of the European Forum on Urban Forestry semester 2021 kicked-off on May 18 last week. The online events brought together in total around 60 practitioners, researchers and people interested to learn about benefits and challenges of managing urban forests in Swiss cities.
Monitoring Ecosystem Services in Swiss Cities (May 18, 9:00 – 12:00 CEST)
The recordings of this webinar are available here.
During the first event on May 18 Jerylee Wilkes-Allemann (Bern University of Applied Sciences) discussed methods to monitor ecosystem services in Swiss cities together with a panel of urban forestry experts. A creative video gathered future imaginations of green city by urban forestry experts – take a look here.
Speakers
- Oliver Gardi, School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL
- Andrea Saluz, Life Sciences and Facility Management, ZHAW
- Naomi Zürcher, Arbor Aegis
- Michael Fuchs, Grün Stadt Zürich
Philosophical thoughts on social isolation: in consideration of the tree (May 19, 11:00 – 12:00 CEST)
On May 19, Naomi Zürcher (Arbor Aegis) took participants on a journey to engage in a philosophical discussion, reflecting on the impact of COVID-19 isolation “imposed” and relating that experience to what we impose on our urban trees. In consideration of the tree – the event invited attendees to critically look at tree reality and what the practice of URBAN Forestry should encompass – the enabling of trees’ communal connections rather than isolating them – an essential element in their well-being and thus ours.
The recording is available here.
Green Spaces and urban Densification (May 20, 15:00 – 17:00 CEST)
During the final event of the Swiss Week on May 20, Bianca Baerlocher (Arbocitynet, Urban Green Polylogue) and a range of interdisciplinary speakers invited participants to explore planning strategies for the sustainability of built habitats: How do we realise the change towards the paradigm of nature-based cities? What are the barriers to implementation? How can we better involve stakeholders and which integrative methods can enable an active and balanced participation of the different actors?
The recording is available here.
A big thanks to everyone involved!
EFUF2021 weeks – call for local contributions
In these uncertain times, we invite all EFUF sympathisers to organise local events to bring EFUF and urban forestry to your doorstep. Potential contributions include walks, webinars, talks, quizzes, workshops, art exhibitions, games, etc. The EFUF team will help you to bring your event live through the brandnew myEFUF app. The local events are ideally organised between 26 March and 18 May (the “EFUF2021 weeks”), but the myEFUF app stays live and running afterwards.
Urban Forestry for your ears
Follow the myEFUF Urban Forestry Podcast on Spotify to tune in to inspiring stories by people shedding light on their passions, career paths and hot topics in working with trees in cities and beyond.
Click here to get to the Podcast.
Do you want to share your story? Get in touch with Bianca Baerlorcher (info@arbocitynet.ch) to discuss further possibilities.
Have a closer look at myEFUF here.
European Forum on Urban Forestry (EFUF) 