Trees, Governance, and the Making of Urban Natures / International Workshop

Trees constitute an integral component of the urban fabric. As urban environmental history has demonstrated (Horta Duarte, 2009), tracing the evolution of urban green governance offers valuable insights into shifting socio-political arrangements and the emergence of hegemonic values, as well as into the formation of new coalitions that underpin processes of socio-environmental reproduction (Kanai and Cometta, 2025). The management of trees in particular —embedded within the metabolic flows that have long shaped cities (Heynen et al., 2006)—acquires heightened significance in an era marked by climate emergency and accelerating biodiversity loss. Increasingly, trees are positioned as key agents in the pursuit of sustainable urban transformation and peri-urban transitions, contributing not only to environmental resilience but also to livability (Maurer, 2024; Dobbs et al., 2018). Yet historical and contemporary examples alike remind us that policies of greenification across the urban-rural continuum may also conceal processes of displacement and exclusion, reinforcing spatial segregation and deepening existing inequalities (Anguelovski and Connolly, 2024).
Tree-centred interventions in the urban realm also present a productive entry point for examining the complex entanglements between cities and the rural operational landscapes upon which they depend (Akiwumi, 2006; Hurducaş, 2018).
These relations are evident not only in pre-industrial contexts—when timber was indispensable to construction, economic expansion, and the material growth of urban areas (Cronon, 1991)—but also today, as forestry economies experience renewed attention and restructuring.