The peer-reviewed design research book is part of the Landscape and Architecture Projections series, published by Leuven University Press and edited by Kelly Shannon and Bruno De Meulder. The LAP series presents radical design practices that respond to pressing socio-political, ecological, and spatial issues.

The book Forest Urbanisms brings together underlying ideas, the concept of forest urbanism, and global practices and research that engage with forests through a critical and nuanced lens. Following the foreword by Antoine Picon, the editors and authors, Kelly Shannon and Bruno De Meulder, make a case for forest urbanism in twenty points. Using the world is forest as the guiding principle, they put the forest in a central role of the spatial organization across regions, scales and quantities – from a solitary tree to an interplay of buildings and trees. This expanding notion of forest expects new morphologies and typologies of forest urbanism. The authors open the controversies regarding humankind’s relations to forests and offer thinking tools past the greenwashing paradigms.

The next chapters explore hands-on projects, including some well-known, alongside smaller-scale yet immensely impactful initiatives, community-led practices, and strategic forest planning projects. Further, they highlight research and projects that challenge conventional ecological urban policies, advocating for neo-Indigenous, and unconventional knowledge systems, as well as participatory governance, projecting us toward an Urban Forest Age—one that transcends property boundaries and considers habitats from India, Australia, and the Americas to Europe, adapting forest perspectives to local conditions. At large, the book shows alternatives that move beyond using forests to demonize urban development and pose the why and how forest urbanism should and could be done.

We present a Q&A with Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon below. Additionally, you are invited to explore Forest Urbanisms in full through open access or a physical copy.

Antoine Picon, in his foreword titled Forest Urbanisms as a Political Project, mentions the assimilation of trees in cities as a forest, even if dwelling in discontinued and planted patches, which seems counter to the archetypical meanings of a forest. What does his statement about forests mean in today’s context?

Forests should be understood as a systemic presence of trees in the environment that allows a substantial contribution to the socio-ecological conditions of that territory. For us, the Portuguese ‘montados’ or Spanish ‘dehesas’, are forests despite the very low tree cover, as well as constellations of pocket forests in cities or simply trees. We were very pleased that Picon highlighted Forest Urbanisms as a political project. For us, Forest Urbanisms underscores the agency of design and design is inherently political. It places design in an unequivocally important role for both the environment and society. It has the power to steer culture and politics and shape the perception and interaction with the environment. The political nature of design lies in its capacity as a catalyst to forge new nature/culture relationships, particularly in relation to socio-ecological injustices exacerbated by the challenges of global warming. The politics of design are tied to environmental ethics and stewardship responsibilities. Notwithstanding the research of Rosetta Elkin (Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation, 2022, University of Minnesota Press), where she questions afforestation in various dryland and desert regions, the world needs more trees—whether in the form of vast forests or networks of individual trees or, where possible, pocket forests in dense urban areas. The recent fascination with forests, in particular, and the non-human living world, in general, stems from the existential cascade of crises facing humankind. The better-late-then-never recognition that the natural intelligence and embodied meanings of trees and forests can be key to not only recalibrating the biosphere, but also to restore severed socio-cultural relations with nature and between species.

There are two important notions expressed:
Forest Urbanisms is radical; it envisions settlements and agriculture embedded within forests. Forest Urbanisms is searching for a “trialogue of forestry, agriculture and urbanism”. Please explain what Forest Urbanisms aim to do. And how?

Yes, Forest Urbanisms is radical. We are living in very troubling times where radical thinking and extreme experimental and built projects are a vital necessity. Since the advent of agriculture and accelerating through the Industrial Revolution until today, humankind has, in the words of William Thomas (1956) ‘fundamentally changed the face of the Earth,’ transforming the ‘as found’ forest occupation into one that sat alongside vast territories of cultivation and human settlements. The cyclic, self-renewing feedback loops of the biosphere were irrevocably, perhaps irreparably, disturbed. Forest Urbanisms proclaims a renewed occupation of Earth.

How? With a concerted effort through design that strategically redefines the relation of forestry, agriculture and urbanism through first and foremost, ridding of their monofunctional understandings and spatial separation. We plea for hybridization of terms, forms and occupations— agro-forestry, forest urbanisms, agricultural urbanisms, agro-forestry urbanisms. Urbanisms is plural since for us there is no possible ‘toolkit’, no one-size-fits-all. Forest Urbanisms, as other urbanisms, needs to be tailored to the context, both geographically as well as ecologically and socio-culturally. It must begin by questioning the damaging legacy of both modernism and monofunctional land use planning and work to develop innovative morphologies and typologies. As mentioned in our preface, the ‘constructing of these (new) worlds requires the deliberate design of forests and tree stands, so as to guide the development of settlement and change the face of the Earth (again) for the better.’

Please point out and outline some practices of forest urbanisms you selected for publishing.

There are a number of practices we highlight, each with their own unique outcomes:

1] forcefully bringing trees into the city, as exemplified by both community participation projects and, more importantly, by urban forestry projects by landscape architects in large cities such as Brussels, Paris, Melbourne and Madrid;

2] healing brownfield with water and vegetation;

3] develop mutually enriching forest and development morphologies and typologies;

4] choreographing forest sanctuaries for underprivileged groups of society;

5] revealing lesser-known culture’s ways of settling with/in forests;

6] radically rethinking the forest, agriculture and settlement relation;

7] and finally, a critique of urban forestry practices (in Berlin, Germany).

To print a book about the conservation and propagation of trees or not to print a book? The question is aimed at the relationship we need to develop with the forest.

This book, is part of a peer-review series published by Leuven University Press. With this second volume, we decided to publish under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-Derivative 4.0 License to freely and widely distribute (design) research as an e-book. However, with each volume, we print a limited number of old-fashioned, printed ‘real’ books. For Forest Urbanisms, the print run was 400 copies. For us, printed books continue to be essential to create a tactile relationship and simply for ease, engagement and the pleasure of reading (as opposed to the distractions of screens). As well, printed books allow for easy annotation. There is clearly a delicate balance between environmental conservation (and the use of paper from trees) and the dissemination of knowledge. The book’s contents focus on humankind’s relationship with forests and seek to educate and inspire a fundamentally new relationship. We believe that the potential impact of the book’s message offsets the environmental cost of its production (including the energy going into digital distribution systems) and the complexities of stewardship.