Growing a Future for Philly: How the City Can Use Trees for Economic, Environmental Benefits

The City of Philadelphia's Tree Plan aims to increase the city's tree canopy while promoting a high quality of life for residents. To fulfill its Tree Plan promises, Philly needs to maximize its efforts to create economic and environmental benefits for all citizens.

Writing for The Philadelphia Citizen, Courtney Duchene described several ideas that other cities are doing that Philadelphia could implement to make its Tree Plan succeed.

New York City's MillionTreesNYC initiative has successfully planted one million trees throughout the city's landscape from 2007 to 2015. Part of this program's success lies in maximizing available tree pits, areas within the cityscape that are available for tree planting.

In Philadelphia, street trees are planted by request and can't be planted without a property owner's permission. However, Philly's Parks uses "opt-out" plantings, where Parks staff will plant trees in every available spot on a block unless a property owner declines.

While urban landscapes aren't ideal for tree growth, Philadelphia's existing street trees do quite well nonetheless. Duchene notes that the average life span of a street tree in the city is about 19 to 28 years.

Stockholm, Sweden, has begun experimenting with a method that involves digging 500-square-foot tree pits and filling them with 3- to 5-inch-diameter stones, compost, and biochar, which is rich in carbon. This growing environment nurtures the tree and allows it to grow strong enough to support the concrete above it.

While the Philly Tree Plan aims to assemble an urban forestry team, create stipends for volunteers, and hire more arborists and street tree inspectors, Duchene proposes paying residents to cultivate and care for the trees. She cites an example from Sierra Leone: A tree program there reforested 2,500 acres and created more than 1,000 jobs.

Ensuring the Tree Plan continues receiving funding and attention is critical to the program's success.

To ensure the Tree Plan stays on track, program partners have created the Philly Tree Coalition, an organization housed within the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) that can support long-term planning and fundraising from public and private sources. Long-term collaboration will be necessary to ensure future success.