Urban forests are increasingly planted for their climate and ecological value, yet their potential to support mental well-being remains underused in most urban greening strategies. This thesis explores how restorative urban forests can be systematically designed and implemented to address psychological needs, using Paris as a testing case.
This thesis begins be developing a typological framework grounded in environmental psychology and landscape architecture. Drawing on theories such as Attention Restoration Theory (ART), Stress Reduction Theory (SRT), Biophilic Design, Shinrin Yoku and the Perceived Sensory Dimensions (PSD’s), four universal forest typologies are defined: the Refuge Forest, Healing Forest, Social Forest and Focus Forest. Each typology is linked to specific emotional and sensorial needs in our modern cities; such as withdrawal, recovery, connection and cognitive clarity.
These typologies are then translated into the Parisian context through spatial analysis, in situ testing and design research. Within this dense city, the forest typologies are adapted to work within the existing infrastructural networks and urban morphology. The Healing, Social and Focus Forests are reimagined as linear interventions inserted along mobility corridors, while the Refuge Forest takes the form of compact, immersive pockets within the city.
The result is a multilayered system of forest interventions that not only enhances urban ecology and environmental resilience, but also addresses mental health at the scale of everyday experience. By integrating emotional restoration into the logic of urban forestry, this thesis proposes a new design language: one that expands the role of trees from climate infrastructure to psychological infrastructure, reconnecting the city with the human need to pause, breathe and feel.

As part of the Urban Forestry – Wooded Commons graduation lab, this thesis project focuses on the relationship between wooded public spaces and social interaction. In an increasingly interconnected world, it is becoming evident that many environmental issues are, in fact, manifestations of deeper social problems. To address these challenges, it is not sufficient to rely solely on ecological or technical solutions; instead, we must uncover the underlying issues within the socio-ecological system. This research explores forests as crucial ecosystems for maintaining biodiversity and spaces that carry social connections and cultural meanings, and offer opportunities for sustainable economic development.

The region of Westland is used as a location to investigate in this research. In Westland, an economically driven region, the disappearance of green public spaces exacerbates pressure on both social and ecological systems. The area faces social-ecological challenges, including a lack of green space, cultural decline, environmental degradation, and social isolation. These complex and interrelated issues demand an integrated socio-ecological systems (SES) approach to create equitable, resilient solutions rooted in Westland's unique context. However, Westland has a long-standing history of horticultural practices, where groves used for production and recreation form part of its cultural DNA. This landscape legacy plays a vital role in shaping Westland's future.
This has led to the main research question: How to improve landscape quality and foster a resilient social-ecological system in an economic-driven region like Westland through redesigning wooded commons?

The findings from the literature study on social-ecological systems provide angles to understand the site issues through the perspectives of key actors and their interrelationships. Additionally, the study of the adaptive cycle, combined with the ecosystem services approach and spatial analysis of the site, helped derive the design's spatial and temporal concepts.

The outcome of this thesis is, firstly, a spatial and temporal vision for Westland, illustrating spatial strategies for each phase in the transformation from glass to grove. This is followed by the design of a regional park that connects Naaldwijk, Monster, and the Natura 2000 area. The park not only enhances ecological diversity by introducing woodlands but also fosters cultural identity, strengthens social connections, and creates opportunities for a more diverse economy.

The Earth has entered the Anthropocene—an epoch in which human activities have become the dominant force shaping planetary systems. Anthropogenic actions such as deforestation, overexploitation and rapid urban expansion have significantly accelerated global climate change. The consequences of this transformation, including more frequent extreme climate events and environmental degradation, have had profound negative impacts on human life and livelihoods. Moreover, environmental issues have exacerbated broader social challenges, which intertwined with ecological crises, leading to reduced social stability and diminished adaptive capacity.
As one of the most ecologically resilient terrestrial ecosystems, forests have played a vital role in Europe's sustainable development strategies. Moreover, forests serve as cultural and economic landscapes, historically embedded in traditional livelihoods and social practices. As such, increasing attention has been directed toward integrating reforestation strategies with socio-environmental adaptation goals, using landscape interventions to enhance territorial resilience and sustainability.
Post-industrial regions, characterized by environmental degradation and economic decline, exemplify spaces where socio-environmental challenges are most acute. This paper focuses on how forest-based ecosystem services can be mobilized to recast such landscapes. Using the former mining basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France as a case study, the research explores how forests can be reinterpreted, planned, and developed as strategic instruments for post-industrial territorial transformation.

The Dutch history of deforestation and reforestation, especially in the recent two hundred years, challenges us to rethink about the relationship between humans and forests. From a feared wilderness, to a productive asset, from a romantic retreat to a managed public green space, as an important cultural landscape, the forest reflects evolving human relationships with nature. In today’s Netherlands, where afforestation and sustainability are actively promoted, a culturally informed vision of future forests and cities can foster a new model of co-development that enhances the forest’s positive impact on well-being and cultural identity.

In this graduation project, the study area is the Utrechtse Heuvelrug region: its forests, nearby cities, towns and villages, and the transitional areas. The challenges it faces go beyond internal issues like forest fragmentation and a weak forest culture identity. They also include external pressures such as recreation, housing, agriculture, and extreme climate. Therefore, forest urbanism serves as an integrated approach that links forest expansion with urban development. By redesigning the transitional landscapes, this project aims to integrate complex functions, spatial experiences, and cultural identities in the new forests.

The result is a new forest metropolis in the Utrechtse Heuvelrug region. Eight types of forests are embedded within the transitional landscape under specific spatial principles. The outcome ranges from territorial-scale planning to local-scale urban-forest interface design. This project shifts perspectives between “seeing the forest from the city” and “seeing the city from the forest,” challenging conventional boundaries between the city and nature, the functional roles of forests, and the potential contributions of landscape architecture to future urban development.

The natural temperate grasslands of the Victorian Volcanic Plains [VVP] are one of Australia's most critically endangered ecosystems. Extreme ecological transformations due to agricultural practices and urban development have resulted in less than 1% of the original vegetation remaining in a pre-colonial state. These losses have led to both environmental and cultural destruction among the region's First Nations People, particularly the Wathaurong, whose deep knowledge of the area established complex land management systems sustaining human cultivation with ecological care for thousands of years.

This research and design project posit that to improve the region, a retrospective examination and uncovering of colonialist and First Nations histories is necessary. With the aim to adapt or reengage with FN’s Peoples cultural views and landscape management which is hidden beneath the surface. The project aims to delineate the fundamental views, laws, and dynamics of the First Nations People and explore their manifestation in spatial ecologies. The focus is on translating these insights into spatial, practical, and programmatic forms to reassess the urban-rural and natural landscape of the Victorian Volcanic Plains. Seven major design ideas were developed through the research, informing a new social spatial landscape for the area.

Furthermore, the design project concentrates on developing a First Nations Agricultural campus within the VVP context, aligning with the design and spatial principles outlined in the research. Situated on a farm owned by the Wathaurung CoOp, this project addresses the complex poly culture systems of Agricultural, Socio-cultural, and ecological production/reproduction. It navigates this complexity through three major design scales: the System Scale, the Compound Scale, and the Building Scale, creating a farm-scape appropriate for the region.

The overarching theme of journey, evident in ecosystem movement, land management processes, and seasonal and social-cultural reproduction, serves as the project's ligaments. It connects various design scales and dualistic systems on the site to educate users about 'seeing this landscape with new eyes.'

The Building design component focuses on designing spaces for core processes of the polyculture system, particularly the seed cultivating and processing areas, where the strongest interconnections between the three major polyculture systems are found.

This project is about redesigning the inter-urban area between Arnhem and Nijmegen in the Netherlands into a coherent multifunctional forest structure. To achieve this, three forest types are developed that respond to current challenges on a global scale. These types are the health forest, the climate forest, and the agroforest.
The design area is seen as a developing polycentric metropolis. The inter-urban forest will respond to the spatial challenges this poses. To this end, the project will make use of existing landscape elements, with a major focus on the Linge river.

Today, our cities continue to expand, and these cities have outgrown traditional urbanist descriptions. The character of the city, and its surroundings, has been replaced by dispersed areas, and a low-density, decentralised form of urban sprawl has become popular around the world, known as the Zwischenstadt, in-between city. At the metropolitan scale, this decentralised urban spatial character provides space for landscape interventions that are full of potential when the landscape is viewed as a whole.
In the past, most landscape interventions have been carried out from a systematic and functional angle, such as the famous IBA Emscher park project, which created a regional scale blue-green network system that is now the basis for a regional green way in the Ruhr area. Few have explored our regional landscapes from the angle of spatial form and spatial experience. Few also look at the question of the arrangement of our regional landscapes through the lens of morphological studies of urban forestry.
Therefore, this paper will explore how to describe the morphology of in-between regional landscape in the context of the Rhineland Ruhr region from two major angles: urban forestry and landscape form in metropolis. at the same time, how to develop these two major theories from the human perspective and apply these two theories to regional design to help people to perceive specific urban landscape images. Finally try to use these landscape theories to shape the future landscape of the Rhineland Ruhr region.

This study investigates how forest-based strategies can strengthen drought adaptation and enhance landscape identity within the metropolitan region of SGE. The research is twofold: it first examines the nature of forest-based spatial strategies and the research and design methods they represent; second, it explores how these strategies can bolster landscape identity and drought adaptation.

The study reframes forests and trees from traditional land types or natural capital into pivotal elements and methods of landscape design, emphasizing their ecosystem services. For drought adaptation, forest-based strategies link hydrological challenges with the regulating services of trees, integrating them into conventional hydrological strategies. For landscape identity, the focus is on tree language—a tree-based design approach that interprets and intervenes in the landscape, viewing the metropolitan territory from a forest perspective.

By clarifying and legitimizing landscape identity and drought adaptation as parallel issues, the study addresses these challenges through spatial, cultural, social, and environmental dimensions of forests and trees. It develops typological forestry strategies and design principles, translating challenges and opportunities into design objectives at three scales: regional, local, and intermediate.

At the regional scale, forestry strategies enhance diversity, narrative, and a healthy regional groundwater system. At the local scale, key sites demonstrate the spatial integration of these strategies, addressing conflicts or synergies in the visions and transforming over time. The intermediate scale results in a coherent blue-green spatial structure, experiential network, and hydrological function, reflecting the forest-based intertwining of city and landscape. This comprehensive approach shows how forests and trees can address diverse challenges through various spatial, cultural, social, and environmental lenses.

In the Anthropocene, human activity has profoundly impacted the Earth's environment, particularly in urban areas where nature is domesticated and humans dominate. Rewilding has emerged as an ecological restoration concept to create more sustainable urban ecosystems, though it faces significant challenges, especially in urban context. This graduation project proposes a new vision for urban rewilding, focusing on restoring natural processes and reducing human control over landscapes while enhancing human experiences of wildness. Using the Schijn Valley in Antwerp as a case study, the project explores the integration of ecological quality and aesthetic experiences in urban forests. Through multi-scale design strategies, it aims to promote harmonious coexistence between humans and non-humans, with riparian forest corridors serving as key spatial elements that offer both ecological benefits and profound aesthetic experiences.

This research investigates agroforestry within a regenerative framework as a unifying element to reconnect urban, rural, and natural landscapes in the RZG triangle, with a focus on Het Middengebied. Decades of intensification in agriculture and urban development have left the area fragmented, with agriculture, nature, and urban systems functioning in isolation. This study addresses these issues by developing a comprehensive framework that promotes spatial connectivity, environmental functionality, and social engagement.

Based on the site’s unique context and relevant theories, a set of design strategies and principles was developed to provide integrated solutions that could provide for both urban and rural areas. These strategies were then applied to the site, guiding the final design. The design exploration across the regional, local, and detail scale shows that agroforestry, within a regenerative framework, can act as a buffer zone that directs resources—such as water, organic waste, and CO₂—and human activity, thereby connecting ecological, agricultural, and urban areas.

The findings show agroforestry promotes resource flow and environmental resilience, though its effectiveness depends on careful management. Unregulated resource use or recreational activity could reduce the system’s regenerative potential. For long-term viability, this study emphasizes adaptive management and a balance of top-down financial support with grassroots community involvement, particularly in the early, low-yield years. This integrated approach highlights agroforestry’s role as a potential bridge between urban, rural, and natural areas, offering a model for regenerative design in landscape architecture.

The Anthropocene necessitates us to rethink the way in which care for and take care of the world we are part of. To acknowledge our entanglement with biotic and abiotic beings, but also our dominance over them and with that our responsibility for them. Employing this notion of responsibility, as well as care thinking as critical concepts for the built environment has manifold consequences for how we conceptualize, approach, and transform it. Regarding landscape and landscape architecture three realms of caring emerge as especially relevant: Repairing (reviving ecosystems humans have damaged), Relating (strengthening the human-nature and landscape-city relationship) and Reducing (limiting the anthropogenic impact on the environment).

Starting from this conceptualization of care, this graduation project is a speculative exploration of how the forest and forestry could be utilized to imagine a more caring relationship between human and landscape within the Zwischenstadt of Parkstad in Southern Limburg (NL). Forestry here is employed due to its multiscale and multidimensional characteristics – it has spatial, environmental, ecological, socio-cultural, and economic benefits. While the Zwischenstadt is chosen as a test case due to its ubiquity in the European, as well as global context. This dispersed type of urbanization is furthermore in need of alternative development strategies and trajectories, which careful and caring design can answer to. By working out a territorial forest strategy and masterplan, as well as localized design projections, the aim is to understand how forest infrastructure can revitalize the Zwischenstadt as an agent of care.

The result is a design proposal that reimagines the whole territory – from residential areas to industrial terrains etc.- as a forest, which can take on a variety of ecological and spatial forms. This forest becomes the principal agent of development for the Zwischenstadt, not only transforming the region environmentally and ecologically (Repair), but also reframing it spatially (Relate), while providing alternatives for the current shrinking condition (Reduce). Through this “all forest” approach the project questions supposed distinctions between landscape and city, the nature of urbanization and urbanity, the human commitment to landscape and ecosystem in the 21st century, as well as representation methods in (landscape) architecture.

The urban heat island effect refers to increased temperatures in highly developed urban areas and has negative impact for human activities and the social environment. This project aims to address this effect by integrating urban forests into the cityscape, while enhancing the living experience of residents.

The project focuses on analyzing cool vegetation characteristics in existing areas and incorporating them into subsequent designs to utilize trees’ cooling capabilities, in order to combating the urban heat island effect and promoting city climate mitigation ability.

Through analyzing the urban ground surface temperature and its relationship with trees, a positive correlation exists. The further design strategy considers tree types, leaf cooling rates, appropriate tree arrangements, and species selection, while addressing factors like shade coverage and adaptability to the urban environment.

Except involves improving existing climate weak areas, this project also formulating a climate mitigation urban development strategy around the urban forest for the city future development.

It’s important to note that the temperature discussed in this project refers specifically to urban surface temperature.

Before you lies the graduation project ‘Tree-Ways for Water Issues’. This project is made within the Urban Forestry Lab as part of the Flowscapes Graduation Studio of the master track Landscape Architecture at the TU Delft.

This graduation project for Zwolle investigates how the revision of the tree and blue structure, necessary for climate change, can be used simultaneously for a number of future spatial challenges for the city as a healthy living environment.
The motivation for this is the demand for more space for water storage and the improvement of greenery by adding and transforming it in conjunction with landscape and urban challenges.

Based on the morphological analysis of the entire city, current policy documents, research into water issues, and the landscape architectural concept of Urban Forestry, an Urban Forestry Plan has been created for the area enclosed by the city ring road, with a detailed plan for the neighborhood Kamperpoort, where greenery, traffic, urbanization, and water challenges converge.

This report presents a literature study, site research, and a design proposal for a new tree structure in Zwolle. The purpose of this project is to showcase how a potential forested structure in an urban environment can help alleviate waterproblems.

The Haagse Beemden in Breda is a neighbourhood that is designed towards the concept of the ‘’inverse town planning’’. In this concept, the underlying landscape structures the layout of the neighbourhood, resulting in an urban area with the landscape at its core. In the case of the Haagse Beemden this means that the neighbourhood was built around an old ‘’estate zone’’ and old green structures and waterways are still present in the design of the area, making the neighbourhood very green. The green character of the Haagse Beemden together with the used ‘’bloemkoolwijk’’ structure are focussed upon creating a neighbourhood with good social values and liveability. However, times have passed since the creation of the neighbourhood and nowadays its liveability and social values are under pressure. This thesis focuses on analysing what spatial aspects and characteristics could possibly cause these problems and how the green structure of the neighbourhood could be improved to stimulate a better nature connectedness, as nature connectedness can act as a catalyst for better social cohesion. The result is a design proposal for an ‘’estate park’’ that connects the neighbourhood to its core identity. This design is based on four created typologies (Central Green, Selective Collective, Connecting Green and Semi-Collective) that are funded by the findings in the theory and analysis phases.

Urban populations are rising all over the world. According to the United Nations 60% of global populations is projected to live in urban area’s by 2030. The formation of the urban heat island effect (UHI) and it’s impact on human health and well-being by the increase of heat stress in hard surfaced urban area’s has been described and measured by a multitude of studies. (Oke, 1989) The cooling ability of urban green infrastructures (Pauleit et al., 2020) with trees in particular is currently widely acknowledged. (Rahman et al., 2020). However, planting trees in city centres where they are most needed for a healthy and sustainable living environment still remains a challenge due to extreme growth conditions (Sjöman et al., 2018). Densely populated urban area’s are constantly developing and due to the limited above and underground space new planted trees rarely reach maturity. In addition the underground utilities with frequent maintenance, soil compression and the lack of nutrients further complicate healthy and consistent growth of tree canopies. (Ferrini et al., 2019) If we want our trees in the hardscaped everchanging urban environments of city centres to provide many of its benefits for the next generation, the technical design for planting, maintaining and strategically locating trees in urban area’s should be reassessed now.

Owing to the unique landscape characteristics of Dutch lowland, forests in Randstad region are found being the result of the interaction between historical development and natural conditions. As cultural influences are genetically embedded in forest formation, the landscape approach to urban forestry provides a novel and wholistic lens looking at the interrelationship between trees and the cities, which enables deeper understandings of analysis and is possible to function as an integrated design tool.

South-west Randstad is facing the pressure of population growth and loss of natural landscape due to projected urban expansion in the following decades. Countermeasures of creating 52,000 new dwellings plus 5,000 hectors of forest by the year of 2040 are proposed in the development vision by the province Zuid-Holland. Therefore, this project aims at providing a spatial scheme that integrates future urban development and forest network that is rich and healthy.

The project starts with urban forest typological analysis, which concludes the interrelationships between underlayers and the urban forest pattens. By the typological analysis, health qualities are evaluated and compared between types that stand for different spatial qualities. The conclusion and comparison of the analysis enable further instrumental function of urban forest typology in landscape design.

The design part of this project envisions a regional urban forest network that consists of existing forest in urban context and an interurban forest which integrates the polycentricity and fragmented forest patches of the region. By the design approaches of structural experiential and dynamic program planning, a throughout design scheme is proposed, leading to desired spatial qualities which are carried out by utilisation of urban forest typology.

Cities are in an urgent need to adapt to the impacts of climate change, particularly, high temperatures and heat stress. Urban Forests are the most effective means of climate adaptation. However, the multiple benefits of urban trees are highly undervalued in the urban contexts. This project focuses on positioning urban trees as effective agents in improving the overall liveability of cities. The premise of the project lies in the fuzzy front end of the innovation process where the i-Tree technology is being redeveloped for its effective adoption in Netherlands. The goal of the project is to synchronize the technical potential of i-Tree as a tool and communicate the benefits of trees to multiple stakeholders in the process.

The overall design direction aims to address these problems through a series of interventions across the system of urban forestry. The concept introduces a public awareness campaign to bridge the knowledge gap between citizens and other stakeholders. The campaign is proposed to stretch over a duration of 10-11 months with several touchpoints along the way for citizens to get enthusiastic about the idea of maintaining and taking care of urban trees. The touchpoints aim to target events like Dutch Design week, Boomfeestdag (Tree Festival) and Springsnow festival. To make the awareness program desirable and interesting. A podcast series and a guide is developed called “How to befriend a Tree?”. A concept for the i-Tree Eco tool is proposed which communicates tree benefits in a way that is comprehensible by all the citizens. All the touch points lead the audience of the campaign to the digital platform of i-Tree Netherlands which helps people become caretakers of trees easily.

Throughout humanity, we have told each other stories to explain the world around us. Stories of myths, folklore and legends, used to connect us with our physical environment, their objects, events and processes. Nowadays we mostly use scientific stories to explore our landscape.

In landscape architecture we also use scientific stories to justify our designs. But even though these stories prove an urgency and credibility for our interventions in the landscape, they sometimes have difficulty connecting with people. Kagan, et al. (2019) argues that a more imaginary approach to narrative, instead of purely scientific, would help people connect to these stories.
In this graduation project this question is explored in the city of Delft in the Netherlands through the narrative approach of myths. The three most important spatial stories in Delft are dissected using the narrative realms as posed by Potteiger and Purinton (1998). These stories are then transformed into the imaginary narrative of myths. These stories are: The story of Delft and the water. The industrial story of Delft and the royal Yeast factory. The ecological story of the urban forests and nature in Delft. These myths formed the basis for an exploration into the landscape and their design.

I found that narrative realms allowed for an approachable method of reading and writing stories in the landscape. Understanding how the story and its parts are interacting in the landscape is crucial for us as designers, because this allows us to know exactly where and what we can change of the stories in the landscape.
The imaginary narrative of myths simplifies and abstracts the elements of the story to their most essential form while still respecting the technical depth behind them. I think that myths offer great potential to be a way of communicating complex stories and meaning to the common layman.

An interdisciplinary approach of the building process is needed in order to achieve a more resilient outcome. The aim within this paper will therefore be about the implementation of GreenBlue infrastructure with Open Building to strive for a circular water cycle within the built environment. The following topics have been investigated in order to find out how this can be achieved. Firstly, distinguishing between different levels of decision making in Open Building is brought into connection with the levels that constitute the built environment through which the water cycle circulates. Secondly, the interdependency between the constituents of Open Building and the water cycle is formulated. Thirdly, it is clarified how Open Building can contribute to a high-density neighbourhood and nature inclusive public space. Lastly, the impact of densification on a net positive water cycle is explained and the possibilities of nature inclusive public space to mitigate these effects are given. By structuring the connection of GreenBlue infrastructure with Open Building at different levels of abstraction, a better understanding of the interdependency within planning for urban renewal is put forward. The spatial implications are clarified and substantiated by research through literature study, case study and by design. Eventually, the outcome is analysed/ tested against the thematic research question.

This graduation project tries to rediscover the importance of three concepts - urban forestry, infrastructure and aesthetics – and unites them with each other, in an attempt to develop a method to design ‘aesthetic urban forest infrastructure’ and discover the potential of such a method. Whereas urban forestry will need more space in our future cities, because of its positive influence on social, environmental and ecological aspects, the form and function of infrastructure are changing and this calls the need for a more integral way of designing it.

Aesthetic perception and experience are a new approach to look at this problem. It is hypothesised that combing these concepts will make it more feasible to create urban forestry and will make sure that future infrastructure will be more than just functional.

The site specific design is done on and along the Prinses Beatrixlaan in Delft, a road that currently creates a barrier between the neighbourhoods surrounding it.

By transforming some aspects of the private, car-oriented, infrastructure and creating a new east-west public transport connection along the Prinses Beatrixlaan, the road can be downgraded and lanes can be removed. This opens up a lot of space along the road, that can be used for urban forestry and better connections between surrounding neighbourhoods. Using four aesthetic categories – the sublime, beautiful, interesting and plain – this urban forest has been shaped to create an aesthetic experience for the users of different modes of transport that move along the road.

The design mainly consists out of three scales, those of the Prinses Beatrixlaan itself, of several location along the road and some details that elaborate on the aesthetic categories. Also a toolbox has been created that gives insight in how to work with these aesthetic categories on different themes.

Finally, a conclusion could be drawn that combining these three concepts – urban forestry, infrastructure and aesthetics - has a lot of potential, for both designers, visitors and nature itself. It gives more space for nature to develop freely, it makes infrastructure more integrated in the urban fabric and creates aesthetically pleasing spaces for people to enjoy their city.