In an increasingly urbanized world, how cities are designed and built affect how urbanites connect to the natural world and develop an ecological consciousness. Findings indicate that people value different urban landscapes for unique reasons but that urban trees provide numerous aesthetic, psychological, social, educational, ecological, moral and economic benefits. Many urban forest values are interwoven across these value categories. How people defined nature, what emotional states the landscape engendered and how they were able to actively engage with natural elements within urban landscapes all influenced participants? sense of belonging to a broader natural community. Overall, findings support the notion that naturalized spaces, even small spaces, can invoke a sense of connectedness with nature within participants. Yet, many respondents suggest that urban nature experiences may not be enough for the general population to develop an ecological consciousness, rather that they require additional educational support.

Policy-makers, project planners and development organisations are becoming convinced that the failure of the new socio-ecologically sensitive strategies co-opted by 'professional' forestry could be better addressed by indigenous forestry. They believe that indigenous forestry might assist with the development of successful forestry projects that are ecologically sustainable and socio-politically equitable. In order, however, to learn from indigenous forestry systems, the acculturation of foresters in the vernacular culture of the forest users appears to be an essential process for understanding and intervening in a local forest management complex. Acculturation entails not only more attention to the immaterial cultural realm, but an understanding of multiple resource stewardship, local ways of knowing and perceiving, local forest values and 'practices of care'. While acknowledging the significance of the politics of knowledge and political ecology this study examines resource stewardship from an alternative neglected angle that of knowledge sustainability and synergistic bridging. It will examine in general modes of knowing and bridging between 'formal' and indigenous forestry knowledge, and in particular the identification of forest value paradigms that are evidently exemplars of bio-cultural sustainability. The main outcomes of this study include the cognitive mapping of forest values among 'Tibetan minority nationalities' in Eastern Kham, their spatial distribution and the coincidence of changes in forest values with cultural or biophysical phenomena. Conceptually this study relies heavily on knowledge-system, hypertext, and paradigm theory and a critique of the narratives of John Locke. The former provide a platform to compare and contrast alternative knowledge systems and a means of synergistic bridging between them and the latter encapsulates a trajectory of western knowledge often known as modernity. The quantitative methods employed in this study included text analysis for forest value identification, multidimensional scaling for the cognitive mapping of forest values, spatial analysis and kriging for forest value distribution, and boundary or wombling analysis for changes in forest values and their coincidence with cultural or biophysical phenomena. The latter four methods are groundbreaking in that they have never been used to study forest values before. The study concludes that there is compelling evidence suggesting homogeneity in forest values with up to 5 geospatial paradigms and up to 12 cognitive paradigms. The findings, especially close correlation between forest values and ethnolinguistics, provide a potential template for foresters to develop multiple models of natural resource or biodiversity stewardship based on local forest values. In terms of the wider application, indigenous knowledge cannot seemingly be sustained if it is integrated with or into western knowledge systems due to the lack of conceptual frameworks for cross-cultural epistemological or psychological integration. Coalescing under the rubric of post-modernism, however, we do find a number of complimentary trajectories, which seemingly provide space for knowledge equity, sustainability and bridging. These trajectories include hypertext theory, paradigm theory, abductive logic, adaptive management, ecospiritual paradigms, and post-modern forestry paradigms. These trajectories and findings offer planners globally a means for synergistic bridging between local and non-local knowledge systems on the road to sustainable forestry and biodiversity stewardship.

Urbanization has reduced the population in rural areas while the urban population has increased in Sweden. As a consequence, also the number of distance forest owners increases continuously and today they own one third of Sweden's privately-owned forests. The purpose of this study was to describe the forest owner cooperative Norrskog’s distance forest owners, their perception of Norrskog's current services and their demand for services in the future. Data was collected through a web-based and a postal questionnaire. The results showed that the average age of Norrskog's distance forest owners was 63 years, a large proportion lived in metropolitan areas and a majority had more than 500 km to their forest property. Most of them owned their forest property together with relatives, 67 % were quite or very satisfied with their forest management, although most of them thought they had little knowledge of forest management. According to forest ownership, management of the family's land was valued the highest along with the feeling of ownership. Maximum yield and growth were valued the lowest. It was found that the forest owners in general were satisfied with the services offered by Norrskog. Thinning and precommercial cleaning got the highest average rating values and forest management plan and property valuation got the lowest. Among services for the future, - documentation of implemented silvicultural measures in the forestry plan was the most popular. Among Norrskog's distance forest owners many generational changes will likely occur soon. The new owners may be more interested in new ways of communication and services and therefore Norrskog should broaden its service portfolio to ease distance forest ownership.

This thesis explores and analyzes the demand for and supply of forests in and near urban areas from a social perspective. Specific focus is directed towards recreational qualities of forests located just outside urban borders, that is, urban fringe forests. To this end, the thesis is based on four empirical research papers. Papers I and II explore the demand component, while Paper III focuses on the supply component. Finally, Paper IV integrates issues of both demand and supply. In Paper I, a survey directed to the general public in urban areas is used to address differences between public attitudes to the forest in general and to the urban fringe forest more specifically. Paper II builds upon interviews with municipal planners with responsibility for green space issues in nine Swedish cities. In Paper III, spatial forest data is analyzed in a GIS to examine how urbanization and population developments influence the supply of urban fringe forests over time. Spatial analysis is further used in Paper IV to quantify forest attractiveness and accessibility in a single measure of urban fringe forest demand and supply. In Paper I it is shown that urban residents associate the urban fringe forest with a variety of design characteristics, as people’s opinions do not solely concern social qualities but also ecological and functional qualities. It is concluded that the overall influence of socioeconomic and demographic attributes is modest in comparison to the basic values and beliefs people hold about life, the environment, and the forest in general. In Paper II it is demonstrated that it is imperative for municipalities to own forest, since this allows them to secure sufficient provisions of recreational forests for future residents and from urban land developments. However, as private citizens do generally not take part of local planning and management decision-making there is an obvious risk for decisions biased towards the interests of social organizations, with specific activity and structural demands that do not necessarily reflect the interests of the general public. From Paper III it is evident that urbanization and population developments do not necessarily lead to a reduced supply of urban fringe forests over time; forest management practices are equally important to consider with regards to people’s opportunities to visit attractive forests for recreation. Finally, in Paper IV it is shown that more attractive forests are generally less accessible to urban residents, regardless of mode of transportation, and that the accessibility to urban fringe forests is generally lower in more deprived neighborhoods. / <p>The research for <em>Paper I </em>of this thesis was conducted in collaboration with Future Forests, a multidisciplinary research program, and its sponsors: the Strategic Foundation for Environmental Research (Mistra), the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Umeå University, the Forestry Research Institute of Sweden (Skogforsk), and the Forestry Industry in Sweden. The research for <em>Papers II-IV</em> was made possible with financial support from the Centre for Environmental Research in Umeå (CMF). Additional financial support was received from the Gösta Skoglund foundation, the Kempe foundation, and the Carl-Fredric von Horn foundation.</p>