Realizing the Potential of Urban Forests: Forests in Cities Workshop Themes and City Case Study Descriptions

Like all forests, forests in cities require resources, science, management, protection, and programming in order to achieve desired conditions. Yet, achieving the desired condition in an urban environment may require new approaches that account for the dynamic and complex nature of the urban setting. These decisions and actions are occurring at the city, park, or site scale. Unlike national parks, or wilderness areas that have a national or state budget, staffing structures, and regulations; forests in cities are regulated and managed primarily at the local municipal scale. This also makes the approaches to forest management planning and policy regulations tailored to individual city governance structures, despite many similar challenges arising at the national level. As part of our Forest in Cities Workshop, we partnered with 12 cities across the United States to create case studies around common themes related to achieving healthy forests as a part of sustainable and healthy cities. Our goal was to provide examples of work on the ground but also provide a lens upon which the work of individual cities could be contextualized as part of common themes and solutions that could be applied broadly. Below we describe the themes of the workshop and the case studies developed by the cities that are included in this special issue.