Saving The Urban Canopy: The Cities Protecting Trees on Private Property

In May, the union representing writers of television shows, movies, and other entertainment went on strike to demand better pay, staffing requirements, and job protections in the age of artificial intelligence. A month later, the actors union joined in on the strike, creating an unprecedented situation where Hollywood came to a stand-still. The writers strike lasted from the beginning of May until early September, when a contract agreement was reached and the writers returned to work.. The actors union remains on strike, reaching a record 100 days in mid-October.

One of the most dramatic – and controversial – moments of the strike came when NBC Universal Studios trimmed all the trees outside their building, exposing picketing strikers to direct sunlight during a blistering LA heat wave. This event brought to light an important and often overlooked environmental justice topic: the danger of tree removal in urban areas. Images of the cruel tactic went viral and stoked outrage and backlash around the world. Trees are crucial to providing shade and controlling temperature, and many disagreed with the cruelty displayed by Universal, and were disappointed by the meager $250 fine imposed on the industry giant by the City of Los Angeles.

This national-level coverage of a micro-battle around urban tree protection has given attention to the same battle being fought by local policymakers across the country. While the suffering of strikers in the LA heat cannot be discounted, people living on the streets in places like Phoenix, AZ are on the front lines of this battle everyday. It’s been a brutal year for Phoenix, with the temperature rising above 110 degrees on 55 days, with 31 of those days happening consecutively in the summer.  

Now, America’s hottest city is using trees to try and cool down and combat climate change. This year, the city of Phoenix embarked on an initiative that plans to plant 200 trees per mile in areas that people would use more if they could avoid the blistering sun, as part of their Cooling Corridor Program. This effort is led by Phoenix’s Heat Response and Mitigation Office, a first of its kind City department created in 2021, in large part due to the leadership of Run On Climate Local Climate Policy Network (LCPN) Member and Phoenix Vice Mayor Yassamin Ansari. The Phoenix Heat Response and Mitigation Office argues that shading is just one of several equally important benefits that urban trees provide, such as air purification and habitat for wildlife. 

Temperatures are rising everywhere, not just in the desert, and a number of ordinances have been put in place to protect trees in municipalities/cities across the country. In Cambridge, MA and Evanston, IL, Run On Climate LCPN members have been a crucial voice in protecting the trees within their jurisdictions. 

Cambridge, MA created an Urban Forestry Master Plan in 2018 to care for the trees within the city in the form of pruning, emergency response, removal, and pest management. The division also runs volunteer-based tree-planting programs and in 2020 launched the “Healthy City, Healthy Forest” initiative to help the community reshape its relationship with Cambridge's urban forest and “provide opportunities for the community to play a key role in keeping the urban forest healthy and strong.” The division aims to empower the community by encouraging equity, resiliency, and shared responsibility.

I sat down with Cambridge City Councillor and Run On Climate LCPN member Quinton Zondervan to gain insight into the importance of trees in urban areas.

“Trees soak up water, and then they evaporate it to cool themselves, which can also cool the environment around them. That is a huge asset to the city because we have so much asphalt and concrete that heats up from the sun during the day,” said Zondervan. “And then it keeps radiating that heat overnight. so it creates what's called the urban heat island effect. The more trees you have shading that asphalt, and concrete, the less of this urban heat island you get. And then on top of that, the trees are soaking up all this water so you get less flooding.”

In addition to the environmental advantages of a thriving urban canopy, Zondervan also stresses the importance of tree protection from a racial and economic equity-standpoint. 

“We see the legacies of inequality and racism where the poor neighborhoods tend to be denser in terms of construction,” Zondervan explained. “They tend to have fewer trees and less space to plant trees, whereas the wealthier neighborhoods tend to have more yard space and so there's more private property tree canopy that protects them against the urban heat island better.”

In response to a 2016 drought that was one of the worst in Massachusset’s history, a citizen science project revealed a shocking loss of urban canopy in Cambridge. The effects of the drought only exacerbated existing issues related to tree-cutting on private property. While there was a tree ordinance in place to protect the trees on large developments, residential properties were being sold to developers who would clear the mature trees surrounding them with no penalty. When Zondervan entered office in 2019, one of the first efforts he was a part of was to put an emergency provision in place for tree removal permits on private property. 

“We put that into place as a one year moratorium where you couldn't cut down a tree without a permit. We had exceptions if the tree was dead or diseased, or if it was an emergency, or If it was falling over – then obviously you could cut it down,” said Zondervan. “That allowed us to gather some data on how often this was happening and what types of trees they were and so forth. Then based on that we put in place a more permanent protection amendment.”

The protection policy prohibits the cutting of a “significant tree” (a mature tree with a diameter of 6+ inches) without planting replacement trees or paying into Cambridge’s tree replacement fund, which is used to plant more street trees. 

While the city did experience some pushback from residents concerned about the government overstepping onto private property, the Councillors were not deterred. To Zondervan, it’s all about the greater good. 

“The problem isn't you, it's systemic. We have to systemically regulate this and that may impact you in some ways that are not great. Overall, we will have a better outcome if we do that,” explained Zondervan, “Fortunately, most people agreed and so we were able to pass that law. We still do get occasional complaints from people, but overall people have for the most part overwhelmingly accepted it and they're very supportive of it.”

Zondervan has also been involved in another strategy to increase Cambridge’s urban canopy: the introduction of “mini-forests'' all over the city. These mini-forests, while providing much-needed shade, also help mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon. One mature tree sequesters 48 pounds of carbon per year, the equivalent of more than 1 ton over a lifetime.  

“We've already planted two and we’re replanting several more in our parks. This is a very intense planting where we're planting hundreds of trees very close together to instantly create a forest. And then it naturally grows out and then of course some of them die and some of them thrive,” he said. “Over time, it creates a much bigger canopy impact than the usual approach of planting a few trees for the park. And again, it's been very successful, very popular, people love it.”

Another city represented within our LCPN, Evanston, IL, has been a Tree City USA community for 31 years. This title is an accreditation for a community that meets a number of requirements for active tree protection in their area. Evanston’s public services coordinator, Emily Okallau, says that the overall goal of a Tree City USA “is to encourage communities, whether it be municipalities or park districts in college campuses, to think about proactively preserving or protecting their trees.”

Evanston’s Climate action resilience plan was passed unanimously in 2018, with the protection of trees on private property listed as a long-term goal. Unfortunately, no policy to realize that goal was passed before that council left office. 

“There was an attempt to get that to pass but in some ways it was kind of a last minute attempt, and it would have been a bandaid at best to try to pass something to get something on the books,” Okallau explained.

After the new Council – including LCPN member Jonathan Nieuwsma – took office in 2021, they sent a proposed plan to the city’s environment board, who asked Okallau for help in drafting a comprehensive plan to support Evanston’s tree canopy. Okallau reviewed policies from surrounding communities to make informed choices for the amendment specifically tailored to Evanston’s needs. 

“If you want to cut your tree down on private property in many of these other municipalities you go to the local government and you say, ‘I want to cut a tree down’, they issue your permit and it costs you a lot of money to do that. That was not something we wanted to do. All that does is it creates an inconvenience for people who have the means to be able to pay for those things and it creates a really, really big burden for people who don't have the means.”

This year, the Evanston City Council was successful in protecting trees on private property for the first time. On September 11th, the council voted to amend the city’s tree preservation ordinance to add explicit protections for trees on private property. 

The new amendment requires anyone planning to remove a tree from private property with a diameter of more than six inches to apply and go through the city’s tree preservation review process, and then get final approval – or denial – from city council. The process is designed to prevent the cutting of as many trees as possible, and works with landowners to come up with alternative solutions to tree removal. If no other alternative is realizable and landowners do get approval, they pay $75.

Reached by video call, City Councilor and LCPN member Jonathan Nieuwsma emphasized the importance of creating tree policy that not only fights the climate crisis, but does so in a way that serves everyone in the community. 

“One of the guiding principles is equity. Evanston is a diverse community ethnically, racially, financially. We wanted to be very conscious of imposing an undue financial burden on our neighbors who are least able to endure that burden.”`

Upward of 80% of Evanston’s urban canopy is on private land, which before this amendment had zero legal protection from being cut-down. This mirrors a national trend. According to the  United States Department of Agriculture, 56% of US forest land is privately owned. 

In the age of the worsening climate crisis and the unknown fate of all those privately-owned trees, local-level policymakers agree that working with other communities across the country is a fast, effective way to implement policies they know will work. In fact, Evanston partially modeled their plan after Cambridge’s, sparked by a conversation between Jonathan and Quinton in 2022. Then, Emily Okallau worked with neighboring communities to hash out more details specific to the area.  

“Quinton gave us some information that I brought back to this working group. Then when Emily came back, she talked to a lot of communities here in the Chicago area” Nieuwsma recalled. 

Okaullau agrees that it’s crucial for these kinds of collaborations between communities to happen for local level climate policy. 

“Yes, it's good to try different things and to innovate. Absolutely. But also it's good to learn from other communities' mistakes or learn from their concerns, and their troubles, and to understand what works and what doesn't work.” She said, "There's no point in reinventing the wheel, you know, and there's also no point in going through a lot of really hard work, to learn the same lessons.”

This kind of collaboration between communities is exactly the mission and purpose of Run On Climate’s Local Climate Policy Network. We work to empower local policy makers nation-wide in their efforts to fight the climate crisis by highlighting existing policy that they can implement in their own community, and connecting them with other climate champion policymakers.

Want to see your community pass stronger tree protections? Contact us at info@runonclimate.org