Sustainability and Governance in Urban Forests: The Swiss Case of Neighbourwoods – SUNWoods – and its Embedding in New Ways of Analysing Urban Woodland Management

Societies are currently facing many challenges concerning the uses and benefits of natural resources, such as land, air, water, fossil fuels, coal, animals and forests. Therefore, issues of sustainability question how the future of human-nature interrelations will be shaped. Transferring this question to urban forestry means analysing urban forestry governance systems in relation to their surrounding natural environment. As scientific methodologies have so far not been able to offer integrated methods and approaches, we introduce the
concept of social-ecological regimes as a basic theoretical approach to governance research. We combine this theoretical approach with the latest findings from urban forestry governance research in order to frame the Swiss Urban Neighbourwoods project.