16th European Forum on Urban Forestry Conference Milano, Italy, 7 - 11 May, 2013

THE WALKING URBAN FOREST: a dynamic green infrastructure for our cities

Urban forests and other greenspace that contribute to establishing a green infrastructure can drive citizen’s behaviors, improve the quality of life through decreasing levels of stress, stimulating social cohesion, and physical exercise and clean the urban air.

The conference will focus on “THE WALKING URBAN FOREST: a dynamic green infrastructure for our cities”, a topic that in recent years has become of more and more interest. The forum will explore different aspects of green infrastructure and how it is necessary to investigate the environmental and social benefits that urban forests and trees in the urban environment can provide. The forum also has the objective of studying the various forms of governance that characterize the urban forest at different scales.

Managers, planners, foresters, decision makers and all the people who confront problems in relation to urban forestry and green infrastructure will be presented during this event.

Three events in one
The 16th EFUF will be hosted by Milan, Italy, a city with a large hinterland where economic development has led to the phenomenon of the sprawling city. Over the past few decades, to counter this phenomenon, the Lombardy Region and local governments have supported a policy of encouraging the establishment of a green infrastructure, characterized by different types of forest, forestry plantations, farmland, social allotments, etc.

The organisation of the 16th EFUF is combined with the presentation of the interim results of the Project LIFE + Emonfur, which aims to monitor the lowland, urban and periurban forests and the role they play in contributing to a balanced environment and the social quality of the local communities.

At the same time 16th EFUF is the occasion for meeting the experts coming from the COST Action FP 1204 “Green Infrastructure approach: linking environmental with social aspects in studying and managing urban forests”. In this way 16th EFUF is unique occasion for: 1) increasing the understanding of the role of urban forestry also in the context of green infrastructure from a scientific and a socio-economic perspective, especially in terms of the ecosystem services; 2) identifying priorities and challenges for future research; 3) providing data set, indicators and/or thresholds to be included by policy makers in local, national or international regulations about land use planning; 4) developing guidelines for planners and managers on how to implement urban forestry and green infrastructure approaches.

The 16th EFUF is a great opportunity for joining all the people involved with urban forests to learn from each other about all aspects of green infrastructures in Europe and from elsewhere.



In collaboration with:

• Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Production, Landscape, Agroenergy, University of Milan
• Department of Agricultural and Environmental Science, University of Bari
• Department of Agri-Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Florence
• Department for Innovation in Biological, Agro-food and Forest systems, University of Tuscia
• Department of Management of Agrarian, Food and Forest Systems, University of Florence
• Institute of Agro-Environmental & Forest Biology (IBAF), National Research Council - Rome
• Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padua

Fuente: http://www.emonfur.eu/