Boston needs more trees
With spring blooming in New England, Boston’s residents can fully appreciate how much their neighborhood trees improve the quality of life in the city. They’re pretty and they nurture the city’s wildlife. They also, critically, provide much-needed shade that’ll come in handy when the summer heat rolls around.
But as the budding leaves begin to add a colorful cover to many of the city’s streets, it’s easy to notice that not all neighborhoods are equally leafy. In some cases, the reasons are obvious and unavoidable: Downtown’s tall and dense buildings, for example, leave less space for big, mature trees than the more residential parts of town. But a closer look at the distribution of the city’s tree cover shows a pattern that underscores a deeper problem: Lower-income neighborhoods are more likely to be “heat islands” than wealthier ones — meaning they face significantly higher than average temperatures on hot, sunny days as a result of having fewer trees and less shade.
Heat islands can have negative health consequences and as they grow worse with climate change will disproportionately affect Boston’s more marginalized communities. A 2021 study commissioned by the city found that neighborhoods like Chinatown and Lower Roxbury can face temperatures that are more than 10 degrees higher than West Roxbury. And with heat-related deaths on the rise — and the fact that Boston happens to be in one of the fastest warming regions on the planet — this is an issue that the city should take seriously.
Mayor Michelle Wu’s Urban Forest Plan, released last year, outlined the need to expand the city’s tree canopy — that is, the total land covered by treetops in an aerial view of the city — which has not increased since 2014. To do that, she’s established an urban forestry division within the Boston Parks and Recreation Department to specifically focus on caring for the city’s trees, and she’s hired a director for the division as well as three new arborists.
The City Council is trying to do its part too, with legislation in the works that is aimed at better protecting trees from unnecessary removal. But while city councilors should certainly take steps to preserve and expand Boston’s tree cover, they should proceed with caution to avoid unintended consequences.
After all, trees are not the only thing we need more of. Boston, and the region as a whole, is facing a housing crisis that’s squeezing people out. And one of the more effective ways to address the lack of affordability is to build more housing, be it market rate or subsidized. But opponents of denser development often use the environment, and tree preservation in particular, as a means to throw obstacles in developers’ ways. The City Council must ensure that its ordinance doesn’t tilt the scales too much against needed development.
So far, there are promising signs that the council is putting a considerable amount of thought into striking the right balance. Ricardo Arroyo, one of the cosponsors of the legislation, told the Globe editorial board that after consulting with the mayor’s administration and other stakeholders, he plans to split this up into two ordinances: one that deals with public land to be considered as early as this week and another that addresses tree removal on private property that the council will take up later in the year.
That’s a good step because as it stands now, Boston’s agencies don’t have a uniform policy on tree removal, and the first ordinance would create standards that all departments would be bound by. It’s also wise because creating new regulations for tree removal on private property is fraught with potential pitfalls — such as lackluster enforcement or, worse, an unfair penalty system that ends up burdening the less fortunate instead of moneyed developers — and requires more public input so no one’s needs are left behind.
“The objective of my office is not to Trojan horse a tree protection policy as an antidevelopment measure,” Arroyo told the editorial board. Indeed, councilors should ensure that the text of the ordinances — which has yet to be finalized — includes exemptions for developments, whether public or private, that advance the region’s housing and transportation needs.
Ultimately, while it’s important for the city to protect existing trees, it must focus on planting new ones too. That includes creating incentives for homeowners to plant trees in their yards such as covering the costs involved in planting and maintaining the trees. As the mayor’s Urban Forest Plan noted, other cities like Washington, D.C., have implemented such programs to great success, and officials in the Wu administration told the editorial board that the mayor plans on announcing a similar kind of program — one that would target homes, small businesses, community centers, and the like — later this spring.
So the next time you struggle to find a shady spot to sit in on an oppressively sunny day, remember that it doesn’t have to be that way. And if the city does this right, it won’t be.
Ultimately, while it’s important for the city to protect existing trees, it must focus on planting new ones too.