Treescape: From forest ecosystem services to spatial forest configurations for an urbanized territory

Little by little, awareness is growing that forests are incredibly important for people and the planet: for biodiversity, the climate, but also for people's health. These are, in other words, the 'services' that forests provide to us. For some time now, scientists refer to this as 'ecosystem services'. Flanders urgently needs more trees and larger forest areas. In our fragmented open space, it is difficult to plant large new forests. Smaller forest elements, however, are also very valuable and can more easily be integrated into this urbanized landscape. The aim of this research is to open up a new thinking on how to integrate more trees and forest in our urbanized environment. New spatial models for forest expansion in combination with other forms of land use will be explored to create ‘forest configurations’, such as a residential forest, business forest or infrastructural forest. The design of these models will be based on the spatial features of forests that define the supply of ecosystem services, such as the combination of shrubs and trees. The models for forest configurations then will be tested through the design of different scenarios for specific study areas, to create a forest landscape or 'treescape’. For this research, a designerly mode of inquiry (research by design) will be used with designs and drawings as research tools. At the end, an evaluation of the forest configurations concepts and treescape scenarios in terms of ecosystem services supply will be made.