Jönsson, A. & R. Gustavsson, 2002, Management styles and knowledge cultures, past, present and future, related to multiple-use and urban woodlands, in: Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, ,
- Author : Jönsson, A. & R. Gustavsson
- Year : 2002
- Journal/Series : Urban Forestry & Urban Greening
- Pages : 39-47
- Abstract in English : Today in Sweden, as in many other European countries, there is increasing concern about the countryside, parklands and nature in general. Given the increasing public concern and uncertainty there will be an obvious need to devote more time to good strategic thinking in long-term management planning. Ways to integrate new approaches to stimulate the involvement of local people and interest group, as well as professional will important. In this paper the authors want to stress the role of people responsible for long-term management policies and the challenges the face as leaders on this path to the future. For this, the paper is based on interviews with fifteen professionals within ecology, forestry and park and landscape architecture. The interviewees had considerable influence on woodland planning in Sweden between 1950 and 2000. Those interviewed represent the “last generation’ of managers who ‘learned by practice’’ a process that is on the way out. One of the questions is: will the coming generations or managers lose some of the qualities the previous generations had? We will accumulate more and more information every year, but information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not the same as understanding of knowledge. Does the interviewed generation have ways that could help us make knowledge more understandable?....For a long period the school system, as well as the dominant research agenda, has been concentrating on giving us better facts in a search for definitive figures, with a high degree of generality and objectivity. However, this has been discovered to have hidden ramification, with many disadvantages. It has led to a standardisation and simplification of knowledge and thus of the landscape. Important intellectual challenges we must face are to consider how we may seize embodied knowledge and how we can once again include practice as partner to theoretical knowledge. Similarly, we must find ways to meet demands for strategic knowledge that encompass generality, based on concrete examples, without having to peel away complexity and contextuality to the degree that our knowledge promote even more simplified landscapes and standardized management regimes in the future.
- Comments/Notes : KEYWORDS: urban forestry, urban woods, management, knowledge cultures, in-depth interviews, knowledge cultures, landscape laboratories, practise