Strategic planning for new woodlands in the urban periphery: through the lens of social inclusiveness

Current strategies for creating new woodlands in the urban periphery aim to provide as many people as possible with a recreational green space close to where they live. When taking a socially inclusive approach, however, this also involves a number of ‘distributional’ questions. These refer to the kind of people likely to benefit the most from such a plan: urban or suburban residents, low or high-income groups, and so forth. This article presents a GIS-based working method aimed at exploring different options for urban woodland proposals with regard to their positioning in relation to residential areas, as well as the socio-spatial characteristics of those areas. The example of seven possible locations for a new ‘peri-urban forest’ in Antwerp, Belgium was used to demonstrate the method's potential to address relevant questions in socially inclusive planning and hence, to improve strategic planning for new urban woodlands.