Inculcating a sense of stewardship and responsibility towards urban trees amongst citizens
Using i-tree technology as a means to facilitate active participation of local communities in urban forestry
D. Ramchandani (TU Delft - Industrial Design Engineering)
Rebecca Price – Mentor (TU Delft - Responsible Marketing and Consumer Behavior)
Jeroen Erp – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Form and Experience)
Rene van de Velde – Coach (TU Delft - Landscape Architecture)
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Abstract
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.