Know Your Neighbors - Vibrant Cities Lab

For decades, officials often planned communities for residents rather than with them. That top-down approach has fallen out of favor as planners increasingly recognize that the people who live and work in a neighborhood should have a meaningful role in shaping its growth and evolution.

First, most trees in most cities grow on privately-owned land. To accomplish tree equity goals, you must rely on what residents, businesses and institutions do on their own property.

Second, plans made without addressing local needs and concerns often end badly. They can break up existing neighborhoods and sever longstanding social connections. In fact, tree placement has historically been weaponized to divide ethnicities and socioeconomic groups rather than unite.

Even attempts to revive and unify distressed neighborhoods can shatter community cohesion as less wealthy residents are forced to move. The role of trees must be considered in such local historical and socioeconomic contexts with your coalition deliberately selected to navigate such dynamics.

NRDC: U.S. DOT’s Updated Equity Action Plan: Key Takeaways and Recommendations by the Transportation Equity Caucus

Finally, no municipal initiative can endure without strong and broad community support. The will to act and the funds to implement simply won’t be there in the long term.

The Tree Equity Handbook provides helpful worksheets to guide you through this process of building a coalition from an equity-focus once you are ready to dive in.