City selects firms to lead long-term environmental action initiative
Tanisha Bhat | The Daily Free Press | February 22, 2021
Mayor Marty Walsh announced the two firms selected to head Boston’s first Urban Forest Plan — a 20-year project focused on protecting the city’s trees, addressing climate change and improving the overall lives of Boston residents — Wednesday.
The Urban Forest Plan is a joint effort designed to address the growing threat of climate change in the city and its disproportionate effects on local communities, according to a Wednesday press release by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department.
Boston landscape architecture firm Stoss Landscape Urbanism and Kentucky-based forestry consultant Urban Canopy Works were selected by the City to head the plan, the press release stated.
The planning phase is expected to start this spring and will be completed in about a year. During this time, the project will be open for public feedback in the fall.
The Urban Forest Plan includes a community advisory group and an interdepartmental working group to better understand concerns brought up by Boston residents, according to the press release. The City also plans to continue its Climate Ready Boston efforts by working closely with communities impacted by rising sea levels and extreme temperatures.
“Mayor Walsh and others have talked about how this is their first Urban Forest Plan, and this is in step really with communities all across the nation that are now undergoing a heightened awareness of trees and green spaces in their own municipalities,” said Rick Harper, extension associate professor of urban forestry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Urban forestry is the management of trees and green spaces within cities or densely populated areas, Harper said. Urban parks, street trees, landscaped boulevards and gardens all make up Boston’s urban forest.
He added that the concept of urban forestry originates from the 1960s, when University of Toronto professor Erik Jorgensen studied diseases among the city’s elm trees.
“The art and the science of growing trees in an urban environment is very real,” Harper said. “It’s very challenging. Forested trees don’t contend with road salt and construction injury and concrete and walkways and roads and all of those things and pollution.”
The City budgeted $500,000 for the plan’s roll-out and supports the planting of an additional 1,000 trees throughout Boston — doubling the typical yearly plant.
Doug Pizzi, executive director of Massachusetts Conservation Voters, said the City had previous initiatives focused on environmental protection, but they were ultimately unsuccessful.
“It’s nice that they’re actually putting together a plan,” Pizzi said. “There have been other efforts in the past to plant trees in Boston and to protect trees in Boston that didn’t really take off because it was never committed to a plan.”
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