While Ameen Taylor feels fortunate he has a cooling tree cover in the front and back yards of his Detroit home, he knows it's a different story for many residents of his hometown where neighborhoods often have little to no shade.
Urban forestry advocates, who’ve argued for years about the benefits of trees in cities, see this moment as an opportunity to transform underserved neighborhoods that have grappled with dirtier air, dangerously high temperatures and other challenges because they don’t have a leafy canopy overhead. Advocates also predict this is the beginning of a long-term financial commitment to trees, especially amid dire warnings from scientists about global warming.
“I just drive around the state, I drive around Hartford, I see places where — imagine if we had just 30 trees in this empty lot — what it means for clean air, what it means for beauty, what it means for shade,” said the Democrat, referring to Connecticut's capital city, where there's tree canopy in just a quarter of its 11,490 acres.
“Across the board, in every state and in our state, we have underinvested in our urban tree canopy," said Hilary Franz, Washington's commissioner of public lands. Seattle is planting 8,000 trees over five years on public and private property and 40,000 in parks and natural areas, an initiative partly financed by federal funds.
Taylor, the Detroit native, is one of 300 workers who will be planting 75,000 trees in the Motor City over the next five years. On Wednesday, he helped to plant a dozen maple trees, carefully hand-digging the holes to avoid underground lines. Taylor, who was formerly incarcerated, is proud of the work he is doing.Planting trees in urban areas is not new. In 2007, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched a successful effort to plant 1 million trees.