In 2022, MUFL students spent a week in Germany
and Italy, visiting the best examples of devel-
oped urban green space. For many participants,
the day spent in Vauban—an urban district within
one of the world's most sustainable cities, Freiburg,
Germany— was the peak experience of the trip.
"Vauban is special because it was designed by the
people who knew they would be living there," Barron
says. "It was a community-up design approach, rather
than a top-down one. You can feel that when you
spend time in the town's parks; the sense of commu-
nity in this exceptionally livable town is palpable. You
can't learn about that from reading a case study."
In 2023, MUFL the cohort went to Germany and to the
Netherlands. In Utrecht, they had the ultimate tour
guide in Cecil Konijnendijk, UBC Honorary Professor of
Urban Forestry and now Nature Based Solutions Institute
Director with Johan Östberg. Konijnendijk showed the
MUFL group how Architect Stefano Boeri is designing
Wonderwoods Vertical Forest, a version of the sublime
Bosco Verticale that will have housing and social and
wellness components—and the extensive green cover
associated with the original vertical forest. "Cecil gave
us the inside scoop with academics, friends groups,
and City Hall," Barron says. "He walked us through
all the pieces that had to come together to pave the
way for this really innovative, futuristic, and extraor-
dinarily community-oriented urban green building."
In 2024 the MUFL cohort went to Stockholm and
Malmö in Sweden and to Copenhagen in neighboring
Denmark. In Stockholm, they toured structural soil
installations with Tree Officer Britt-Marie Alvem. They
also visited the celebrated UNESCO World Heritage site,
Skogskyrkogården (The Woodland Cemetery) and spent
a day touring Malmö's urban forest with Johan Östberg
and Gustav Nässlander of Trädkontoret (The Tree Office).
The MUFL group also made a foray into Copenhagen,
Denmark to spend a day with urban forestry scholars.
"What stuck with me from talking with Oliver Bühler, Lars
Schultz-Christensen, and Iben Thomsen was the inno-
vative and beautiful city-wide flood-proofing measures
Copenhagen put in place after suffering a devastating
flood in 2011 from a cloudburst event," Barron says. >>
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