Introduction
Why have an Urban Forest Strategy?
Having a strategy will enable all concerned to guide the future of the urban forest and achieve the goal of planning 360,000 trees over the next 10 years.
The urban forest encompasses both private and public land. It includes private gardens, streets, housing estates, public parks, schools, cemeteries, small woodlands and semi-natural ancient woodland. It is important to have an Urban Forest Strategy so that everyone involved can understand how the urban forest will be planned, managed and protected for future years. For the purpose of this Strategy, we are concerned with the parts of the urban forest that can be directly managed and influenced by Coventry City Council (CCC).
The urban forest as a fundamental part of GI8, 9 physically stretches across administrative and operational boundaries. It is recognised that effective planning and management of the urban forest is best across authorities like CCC and beyond. The Habitat Biodiversity Audit (HBA) undertaken by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust spans Coventry as well as six Warwickshire Local Authorities. Partner strategic planning and delivery undertaken by local authorities is seen as best practice. Coventry shares a common vision for the best use of authority land, recognising that the urban forest provides character and beauty as well as multi-functionality through the ecosystem services it supports. The Department for Communities and the Local Government in 2008 published Trees in Towns II'10 which recommended local authorities produce a framework for taking a strategic view on the status and health of the urban forest by creating a tree strategy. With the priorities for local authority spending under constant pressure and review, an Urban Forestry Strategy is critical to enable the long term benefits and resource requirements to be identified alongside of the priorities of the wider CCC policy context. In Coventry, urban trees play a crucial role in the delivery of the City Centre Area Action Plan (CCAAP)11, which aims to ensure that the ‘city centre will continue to be developed and regenerated to ensure it is a truly world-class city centre, leading in design, sustainability and culture’. It must be recognised that the multi-functionality of the urban forest will evolve through time alongside pressures placed on its very being as urban infrastructure expands and climate change takes its toll. The dense urban environment of Coventry provides limited opportunities for urban green space, with the ring road acting as a major constraint in terms of severing the city’s GI, resulting in its urban forest becoming isolated and peripheral. Due to these pressures and constraints, the Urban Forest Strategy needs to be flexible over the long term. Through the process of developing this Strategy, a vision has been defined with the aim of developing a common understanding of how our urban trees provide:
- tangible emotional and health benefits;
- supports our natural ecosystem; and
- energises the economy of Coventry.
Format, structure and content
Managing, planning and protecting the urban forest is complex. There are many people from all walks of life who are directly or indirectly concerned with and benefit from the urban forest. The Strategy has therefore been presented in an accessible format with different layers of detail to service a wide range of readers and stakeholders. The format is deliberately brief and targeted at getting large amounts of information across in accessible style. Where possible, technical information has been kept to a minimum but is referenced using endnotes so that the reader can be signposted to more detailed information. The Urban Forestry Strategy has a direct relationship with the wider policy framework. Different audiences will use the Strategy in various ways.
