What do they like about trees? Adding local voices to urban forest design and planning

Local preferences and priorities for trees and greenspaces are important considerations when planning and designing a community’s urban forest. Local residents can provide insight into place-specific contexts such as local esthetic preferences, social systems, cultures, and attitudes to inform appropriate design responses. Residents also inform researchers of key local issues that may impact urban forest configurations, and may differ from expert opinions. This paper reports on a case study from a suburban community in Canada that used a combination of methods to reveal new, place-based information to inform more contextual design for a community’s future urban forest. Results reveal that the current urban forest in the community does not reflect the participants’ preferences and differs from experts’ priorities. The findings suggest issues that should be considered in future urban forest design and planning processes.