While Lorinc snaps a frame of the latest private project gone wrong, the larger problem may well be – as one commenter points out – a tendency to treat trees as aesthetic objects rather than living things. Here are some points I found interesting:
- …landscaping crews began chopping down more than 20 dead street trees, leaving a series of waist-high stumps poking out of the high-concept black marble planters…
- …this latest horticultural repair job is yet another embarrassment in a long-delayed project that dragged on over four years and cost the local business improvement area more than $24-million.
- [The trees] died because they were planted [in a way that went] against the advice of city arborists, following numerous construction delays and a strike.
If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read the full story here. As a grassroots organization with many community ties, LEAF has worked for the past 17 years to not only plant more trees and shrubs in our urban forest, but to shift the paradigm from street trees being seen as little more than nice-to-look-at peripheral objects to seeing them as things we need, and perhaps most importantly, things that need us.
If you’re interested in this topic, join us Thursday, May 17 for a free presentation at The North York Civic Center while we discuss the History and Future of Boulevard Trees with Peter Simon (one of the voices quoted in the article). As a landscape architect, he has spent much of his life working to understand and improve the conditions for urban trees not unlike those that came down last week. Looking to the future, incidents like the Mink Mile mishap can be avoided if - rather than taking those leafy things for granted - we approach urban planning with fresh eyes and strong voices.