Reviewing eight years of Urban Forestry & Urban Greening: Taking stock, looking ahead

Abstract

Since its launch in 2002, the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening (UFUG) has welcomed research from a range of disciplines and perspectives, with the aim of enlarging the body of knowledge on topics related to use, planning, design, values, and establishment of urban and peri-urban woody and non-woody vegetation. Here, we present a review of all scientific contributions published in the journal's first eight volumes (159 in all), and provide suggestions for improving the future content of UFUG. A framework for review was developed based on the journal's Aims and Scope, which set out the journal's ambitions related to, e.g. scientific diversity and international scope. The journal's achievements until now were assessed by analysing all scientific contributions for type of paper, type of green space, research theme, type of science, research method(s), and nationality of first author. Our review shows that the large majority of the contributions have been research papers. Regarding type of green space studied or considered, the overall green structure, woodland, as well as trees have been well covered, with parks having been studied much less. When looking at research themes, UFUG's envisaged variety of topics is evident. The physicality of green space, green space management, and the experience of green space have been given most attention, with less attention for valuation and governance aspects. Most UFUG contributions have been rooted in the social or natural sciences, with about one fifth of all papers involving more than one discipline, and the humanities being almost absent. Scientific diversity can also be seen from the wide range of research methods applied. The journal lives up to its international scope, with a large number of countries present. However, most first authors have been based in Europe and North America, with the USA and Scandinavia being particularly dominant. For the further development of the fields of urban forestry and urban greening, it is important that UFUG helps foster scientific debate and advancement. This will require greater focus on review papers, meta-studies, short communications, and on theoretical and methodological issues in general. Thematically, several relevant topics within urban forestry and urban greening, such as organisational aspects of green space management, could be given more attention. Also, normative issues such as the common understanding of ‘green’ as something inherently ‘good’ need to be addressed more critically.