Greening the City–Urban Forestry, Urbanism and the Climate Crisis

Undergraduate

This Urban Lab explores greening as a core urbanistic strategy of cities, historically and contemporaneously. We look at the who - exploring stakeholder mapping and power analysis; the where - data-driven and community-driven efforts to prioritize where to work; the how - through the lens of public outreach and engagement techniques and tools, and operations and maintenance needs of urban infrastructure; and the why - the many social, environmental, and economic benefits of trees and other greening solutions. Trees have been planted in cities for thousands of years. The history of tree planting in Asian cities dates at least to the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BC), which documents trees as solutions for flood and erosion control and as tools for ceremonial urban design. In Europe, Amsterdam began systematically planting trees in the 14th century and passed a city law in 1454 prohibiting the cutting down of trees. Fast forward to 2007 when New York City launched the Million Trees campaign and hundreds of cities globally now have established ambitious tree planting goals to help catalyze public and private resources. In 2023 the Inflation Reduction Act passed by the U.S. Congress approved $1.5 billion for the U.S. Forest Service to distribute through the Urban and Community Forestry grants program. This is perhaps the largest-ever investment of public funds into urban forestry, making it a perfect moment for this Urban Lab to investigate the interlinkages in contemporary urbanism between greening and the climate crisis. 1½ Course cr F 1:30pm-4:30pm