Landscape Governance and Management
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We conduct research, development and teaching on governance and management of landscapes, primarily in urban environments. Our expertise largely concerns professional management of outdoor environments.
The Landscape Governance and Management (LGM) subject area addresses multiple and complex challenges related to governance and management of landscapes. Our focus is primarily on urban and peri-urban landscapes and emphasizes the importance of addressing current global challenges in a rapidly changing world, such as climate change, urbanization, biodiversity loss, segregation and unhealth. These challenges are resulting in increased pressures and demands on open spaces and an increasing number of stakeholders.
About us
LGM focuses on long term, socially beneficial and resourceful governance and management practices that balance often-competing interests ensuring landscapes remain ecologically and socially viable. By integrating ecological, social, organizational and economic perspectives, LGM contributes to deepening the understanding of diverse landscape dynamics? and the development of long-term strategies and high-quality, multifunctional landscapes for/with several user groups.
LGM is a unique subject area and group within the European context, with results being applied and respected internationally. LGM has actively been working on theory development describing landscape governance and management (Jansson et al. 2019; Jansson & Randrup 2020). Smart approaches to landscape management were addressed by Deak Sjöman et al. (2022), and lately, theory building related to nature-based solutions and conflict management has been presented and further developed internationally through Nature Based thinking (Randrup et al., 2020; Mercado et al., 2023). Significant contributions to books and other publications focusing on green infrastructure, biodiversity, nature-based solutions, user-group perspectives, landscape architecture and urban forestry in theory and practise have also been published during the last years.
LGM keeps strong relations to both Swedish and international practice to develop new empirical and theoretical knowledge. Collaboration with different local governments in Sweden and internationally supports our research and ensures a local lens towards global sustainability policy to meet needs on several scales. Our collaborations not only enhance global knowledge exchange but also ensure that societal actors and students are informed by the best national and international practices.
Our work includes for example:
- Optimizing urban open spaces for multifunctionality and to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
- Engaging different user groups, local communities and stakeholders in green spaces and urban forests, and understanding ethical concerns and environmental justice of e.g., marginalized user groups.
- Developing theoretical landscape governance and management models to effectively balance conflicts of interest over land use, and to address how multi-stakeholder collaboration and decision making can be fostered to govern and manage urban open spaces.
- Supporting Swedish municipalities in documenting existing and future development of trees and green spaces, e.g. as a response to the new European Nature Restauration Law, through development of standardized, long term urban landscape monitoring programs, including the use of IoT, AI, and remote sensing technologies.
- Continue to better understand, describe and apply values of especially cultural ecosystem services provided by urban and peri-urban landscapes, with increased societal emphasis on limited resources.
Meetings and events
The subject group Landscape Governance and Management organizes talks on landscape governance: Governance Talks.
Since 2021, Outdoor Environment Day has been organized annually by the subject group Landscape Governance and Management and SLU Landscape. The aim is to promote knowledge exchange about outdoor environment management between research and practice.
Since 2025 the subject group Landscape Governance and Management has been involved in the Nature-based Solutions Network at SLU. The Nature-based Solutions Network is an interdisciplinary initiative to boost collaboration in research and education for advancing nature-based solutions.