Join Abby Newsham, Chuck Marohn and occasional surprise guests to talk in depth about one big story from the week in the Strong Towns conversation, right when you want it: now.
Episodes
Wednesday Nov 27, 2024
Wednesday Nov 27, 2024
Canada needs an additional 3.5 million housing units by 2030, and that means Canadian cities — as well as many others throughout North America — are facing the challenge of building more housing without wasting natural resources like mature trees. In this episode of Upzoned, co-hosts Abby Newsham and Chuck Marohn discuss this balancing act, the high value that trees bring to a community, and why sacrificing “urban forests” for housing doesn’t have to mean sacrificing those trees.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
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“Can urban forests survive the housing boom?” by Hanna Hett, Canada’s National Observer (October 2024).
10 minutes ago
I grew up in New York City and now live in Sacramento, CA. I think putting NYC on a pedestal as the example of a city with trees is misleading (also Sacramento definitely has a higher density of trees than New York). Central Park is most definitely not an urban forest. I think Chuck’s point is well taken, but he doesn’t quite capture the nuance. If you want to argue that urban forests can’t exist, it should be because true nature is wild and messy and has undefined boundaries, and that’s antithetical to the idea of an urban space, which is highly planned and predicated on boundaries. But this episode draws a weird line from that to why a patch of trees in a city is a bad thing. So maybe urban forest is a misleading term, but that doesn’t negate the value of having multiple trees in a small space within a city. The issue is not necessarily the presence of trees but rather the term we use. What I really don’t understand is why Chuck says ”patches of trees” can’t and shouldn’t survive the housing boom but then goes on to say that parks are integral parts of urban spaces. Half of the podcast is spent talking about the value of trees -- so why would it be ”wasting $100,000 worth of land on nothing” if trees are clearly valuable? Just because it’s not actually a ”forest” doesn’t mean it suddenly lacks value.