Co-creating Flemish Forestscapes

The paper explores the implementation of the afforestation programme in Flanders since 2019. Framed by the authors’ situated knowledge, it recounts the diverse strategies and tools of the programme, aimed at realising 4,000 hectares of new forests by 2024. With a focus on collective and systemic efforts, the paper outlines three operational domains to analyse the coalition-building process at regional and local levels: setting the institutional space, infrastructuring afforestation in spatial practice, and tailoring design tools for urban forestscapes. It explains how, beginning with the creation of the regional Forest Alliance coalition, a set of policies, soft power mechanisms, and designs have been promoted to accelerate the realisation of (sub)urban forest projects. In doing so, the article proposes a discussion on the forest metropolis as a contextualised cultural project, capable of aligning forest policies with urban forestry initiatives, as well as converging the urbanisms of territorial and domestic spheres, and positioning designers as crucial interfaces between these diverse realms.