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• An understanding of urban forest governance from the perspective of municipal managers is limited. • Interview data was collected from urban forest managers in local governments in Melbourne, Australia. • Challenges for managers' decisions: inter-departmental coordination, community views, culture of risk aversion. • Some other challenges varied across urban centres. • Challenges of inner centres: lack of space, public consultation, and new developments • Challenges of outer/regional centres: urban expansion, active use of greenspace, and lack of data. Awareness of the benefits of urban trees has led many cities to develop ambitious targets to increase tree numbers and canopy cover. Policy instruments that guide the planning of cities recognize the need for new governance arrangements to implement this agenda. Urban forests are greatly influenced by the decisions of municipal managers, but there is currently no clear understanding of how municipal managers find support to implement their decisions via new governance arrangements. To fill this knowledge gap, we collected empirical data through interviews with 23 urban forest municipal managers in 12 local governments in Greater Melbourne and regional Victoria, Australia, and analysed these data using qualitative interpretative methods through a governance lens. The goal of this was to understand the issues and challenges, stakeholders, resources, processes, and rules behind the decision-making of municipal managers. Municipal managers said that urban densification and expansion were making it difficult for them to implement their strategies to increase tree numbers and canopy cover. The coordination of stakeholders was more important for managers to find support to implement their decisions than having a bigger budget. The views of the public or wider community and a municipal government culture of risk aversion were also making it difficult for municipal managers to implement their strategies. Decision-making priorities and processes were not the same across urban centres. Lack of space to grow trees in new developments, excessive tree removal, and public consultation, were ideas more frequently raised in inner urban centres, while urban expansion, increased active use of greenspaces, and lack of data/information about tree assets were concerns for outer and regional centres. Nonetheless, inter-departmental coordination was a common theme shared among all cities. Strengthening coordination processes is an important way for local governments to overcome these barriers and effectively implement their urban forest strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decisions about urban forests are critical to urban liveability and resilience. This study aimed to evaluate the range of positions held by urban forest managers from local governments in the state of Victoria, Australia, regarding the management and governance challenges that affect their decision-making. This study was based on a Q-method approach, a procedure that allows researchers to evaluate the range of positions that exist about a topic in a structured manner based on the experiences of a wide group of people. We created statements on a wide range of urban forest management and governance challenges and asked urban forest managers to rate their level of agreement with these statements via an online survey. Managers generally agreed about the challenges posed by urban development and climate change for implementing local government policies on urban forest protection and expansion. However, there were divergent views about how effective solutions based on increasing operational capacities, such as increasing budgets and personnel, could address these challenges. For some managers, it was more effective to improve critical governance challenges, such as inter-departmental and inter-municipal coordination, community engagement, and addressing the culture of risk aversion in local governments. Urban forest regional strategies aimed at coordinating management and governance issues across cities should build on existing consensus on development and environmental threats and address critical management and governance issues not solely related to local government operational capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban nature management is usually guided by the most common, frequently mentioned, or easily elicited perceptions expressed by a dominant cultural group. This is unlikely to encourage widespread community support or foster urban nature stewardship in the long run. Considering how people representing diverse cultural identities perceive the value of urban nature is key to meeting diverse community needs. In this study we explore how people not born in Australia, people who speak a language-other-than-English (LOTE), and people who self-identify as speaking a minority language, perceive the value of urban treed sites, trees at these sites, and the wildlife at these sites. We used an intercept questionnaire to collect empirical perception data, delivered in 12 different sites, including parks and streets, located in and near the Greater Melbourne Area, an ethno-culturally diverse urban area in the state of Victoria, Australia. We analyzed 1127 responses collected over 2 years using contingency- and regression-based procedures. We found that people who were not born in Australia rated the importance of treed sites and trees at these sites higher than other respondents, and LOTE respondents rated the importance of treed sites and trees at these sites lower than other respondents. Also, LOTE and some language minority respondents associated more psychological themes (i.e., stress reduction, feeling good) with treed sites than other respondents. These differences account for the influence of other cognitive, behavioral, and social-ecological context factors, such as nature relatedness, knowledge of trees, exposure to trees, demographics, and type of site (i.e., parks or streets). We discuss what these results mean for urban nature research with consideration of diverse cultural communities in cities, including integrating cultural diversity as a complement to the dominant consideration of socioeconomic patterns for understanding urban nature dynamics, accounting for conflicting values, and better communicating with and engaging these communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]