Trees are Infrastructure, too: A theory of the urban canopy catalyzing movement towards the more human-centric, wellness-oriented, and self-actualized city
by Ryan Barry (rsbarry@gmail.com)
Imperfect musings blending the practical, philosophical, and at times provocative on Sustainability, Resilience, Regeneration, Well-being, Cities, Economic & Sustainable Development, Conservation, the Changing Nature of Work, Innovation and other topics relevant to our modern times.
Posted: January 25th, 2023 (Originally Written May 15, 2017)
We add pictures to the walls of our houses, windows for light, plants for comfort, rugs, furniture, decorations and other amenities and comforts that make spaces pleasant, comfy, cozy. Pictures and paintings of the most beautiful of scenery — flowing rivers, snow-capped mountains, fields of flowers, abundant seashores, and lush forests often adorn the most personal of places attempting to bring nature indoors, and us as humans closer to nature. So, why do we at times neglect to do the same in public spaces? Cities are at times described as the polar opposite; concrete jungles, gritty, crowded, and claustrophobic. Despite such conditions, a majority of the population around the globe now call cities and surrounding suburbs, home (2). The world’s rapid pace of migration to the city is predicted to continue — we’re living the “urban century”.
As a predecessor to this urban-age, we as a society have been quick to lay pavement with a mindset that pavement equals development and development equals progress. At times this hasty development is an unintended culmination of small actions and others a conscious decision and model of development that makes “economic sense”. Though, what is viewed as making economic sense in the short-term is not always so in the long-run. Further, it’s not always ideal for us as individuals, a collection of people, the whole of humanity, and other inhabitants of this earth we call home. How do we move from this quantity-based hasty pavement laying and development to methods based in quality. Development that is thoughtful, created with people in mind, and inherently value creating to communities. This may take the form of adding back elements, characteristics, and attributes that were neglected in previous iterations of “development”.
There must be acknowledgement that the underlying physical infrastructure that creates our modern cities is not to be taken for granted — think water, sewage, electric, roads, rail, public transportation, sidewalks, waste disposal systems, waterways, and the list goes on. There are many cities in the ‘developing’ and even considered ‘developed’ world (e.g. think of the Flint, Michigan story) that are unable to say they can depend on having clean water, consistent electricity, passable roads, or sanitary sewage and waste systems. These systems are not to be neglected and are in need of perpetual investment, improvement, and updates as many cities struggle with rapidly dilapidating infrastructure. As the infrastructure’s maintained, is there opportunity to reimagine what is and what could be and add back elements that enhance well-being?
We many times find infrastructure components of the city to be both desired and expected. When we plug a cord into the wall we expect there to be electricity not thinking about all the workings behind the scenes that make the electricity available. So, what is it that creates an ongoing saga of dependable electricity vs. a landscape of trees? Several times a year many communities find bucket trucks in the neighborhood, contracted by power companies for the sole purpose of clearing powerlines of branches and trees. No tree is immune from the powerline clearing. The thought process is straight forward; if there are less branches/trees in close proximity to the lines that provide us with electricity there is a lower probability of electricity not being available. We complain about the neglect of the trees during the clearing process but also when power goes out due to an ice storm or heavy winds due to those same trees. So, why is it that we care so much about the trees? The trees, as do roads, electrical powerlines, waste systems, and what’s traditionally known as “infrastructure” add some other layer to the city. We propose that trees are infrastructure too.
Trees in some native cultures are considered the center of the community. Where goods are traded, rituals occur, and people commune. In many Disney films and popular culture trees take on human-like characteristics with powers beyond the human-realm; Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas, The Spiritual Tree in Avatar, The Great Deku Tree in Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. If you’ve ever been in the presents of the few remaining old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest; the Redwoods, the Sequoias, giant Douglas Firs you’ve maybe stumbled upon trees that leave you in awe, give you a feeling of spirituality — the sacred. When in their presence time stands still and one finds a glimpse of why the Native Americans believe spirits to be found beyond the human in the natural world. What is it about trees that makes us give them both oracle, sacred, and magical characteristics but also the most human of characteristics and qualities; perhaps it’s because they themselves make us as humans more human — more connected to ourselves.
We are at home in nature; 99% of our time on this planet we’ve lived outside (1). The world famous Biologist, Researcher, Theorist, Naturalist and Author E.O Wilson describes this connectedness in the term he coined, “Biophilia”. Biophilia describes a bond that humans have with nature, plants, and animals. Scientific evidence is increasingly revealing the “biophilia” phenomenon to indeed be true. Other great cultures, writers, thinkers of the past such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir understood and wrote of such theories and phenomenon. But we as a modern society often times disregard the unexplainable at times even considered to be divine or mysterious. National Geographic author David Gessner writes, “Science is proving what we’ve always known intuitively: Nature does good things to the human brain. It makes us healthier, happier, and smarter (3).”
The Japanese have known this for some time. In 1982, the term shinrin’yoku (森林浴) or forest bathing/forest medicine was first used as a scientific terminology. It’s literal translation is forest shower (森林 shinrin = forest; 浴 yoku = bath). Associate Professor at Nippon Medical School in Tokyo and President of the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine, Qing Li is producing legitimizing scientific evidence in the laboratory “that a walk in the woods can help prevent cancer, fight obesity and reduce stress and depression (6).” The government of Japan has even invested millions in both research and “forest therapy trails” — now 60 of them in Japan (6).
In further studies, recent research utilizing functional MRI to watch brain activity in people viewing different images found that “when subjects viewed urban scenes, their brains showed more blood flow in the amygdala, which processes fear and anxiety. In contrast, the natural scenes lit up the anterior cingulate and the insula — areas associated with empathy and altruism (3).” Dr. Larry Rosen (a psychologist) and Dr. Adam Gazzaley (a neuroscientist) in The Distracted Mind — pose that “we have ancient brains learning to live in a high-tech world”. They explain why our brains aren’t built for multitasking, and suggest better ways to live in a high-tech world without giving up our modern technology. They propose the importance of knowing when your brain is overloaded and in need of calming down; a solution…take a nature break. “We know walking outside in nature for just 5 minutes resets and calms your brain (4).” In other examples of natural benefit, if you’re sitting at your desk and you can see a tree within 100ft cognitive performance goes up and stress down. Mass General Hospital is even utilizing the phenomenon of biofilia in the brain surgery recovery sweet for healing purposes (1).
The definition of an ecosystem is a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment — the term is often paired with innovation, entrepreneurial, and economic (innovation ecosystem, entrepreneurial ecosystem, and economic ecosystem) to describe a connectedness and webbing that leads to creation. It seems it is at times forgotten as a descriptor of the places we live. Often forgotten is the circular-relationship of us human-beings as organisms and the physical environment that we create. We as individuals, communities, societies, humanity create the physical built realm. In return, in certain regards, the physical and built environment creates and is a reflection of us as a people. In the work, The Baltimore School of Urban Ecology: Space, Scale, and Time for the Study of Cities, what is called “nature is not just the environment, a mode of life separate from society. Instead, the Baltimore School of Urban Ecology insists on a research practice that seeks to understand urban social-ecological relations and processes of change as opposed to an approach to studying ecology ‘in a city’ (2). Urban social-ecological systems and an ‘ecology-of-the-city’ vs. the traditional ‘ecology-in-the-city’ is proposed. The authors describe these city systems or “urban mosaics, as integrated ecosystems consisting of biotic, physical, social, and built components (2).”
An ecology-of-the-city mindset acknowledges interconnected systems and the affect of component parts on each other. The mindset takes into consideration parts beyond the built, the intangibles that are often left out of straight forward studies of the physical-elements within cities. Though there is increasing evidence for such natural science, often times such insight and component-part connection to the natural world or the intangibles are dismissed. As a society we at times separate the physical from the less tangible yet connected. We’ve disconnected mental health from physical health despite abundant evidence of mental health’s influence on one’s physical health and vice versa. So, you may be asking well how does this mental/physical health metaphor relate back to what we’re exploring here — the nature in cities and it’s impact on the nature of cities. The following studies explain; “in 2015 an international team overlaid health questionnaire responses from more than 31,000 Toronto residents onto a map of the city, block by block. Those living on blocks with more trees showed a boost in heart and metabolic health equivalent to what one would experience from a $20,000 gain in income (3).
As much as cities have their benefits, they too come with the wickedest of problems. Urban problems are rarely simple because they stem from interrelationships of complex systems. The variables making up these complex systems include biological, cultural, economic, physical, political and social factors to name a few. Further, there often times aren’t analytical systems or standards in place to determine if an intervention, policy, or other form of solution has any impact at all. With this said, the press has been littered with talk of healthcare reforms over the past few years, but not much is talked about regarding livable, sustainable and wellness-oriented communities; the interconnectedness of where we live to our health. What if, something as simple as paying more attention to the urban canopy could nudge society to better living conditions; more calm and increased natural body metabolism, less depression, anxiety, anger, fatigue and stress leading to less heart disease, diabetes, obesity; creating better overall physical and mental health in communities; and more human dignity for all of us.
Both Jane Jacobs and Steven Johnson, renowned thinkers on topics such as cities and complex systems “observed that emergent behaviors can result from thousands of individuals and a few simple rules of interaction that can create a familiar but complex choreography of interactions among strangers producing routine social order, cohesion, trust and safety (2).” Such thinking is further illustrated by thought that having certain standards of upkeep in communities, such as sidewalks that are in good-repair as opposed to degraded, can ripple to the neighborhoods social cohesion and even safety. In 1982, academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, coined the “Broken Windows Theory” using broken windows as a metaphor for disorder within neighborhoods, linking disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent occurrences of serious crime (5). What if something as simple as an urban canopy and trees as infrastructure could create small nudges to create this choreography of interactions that make a place move up the civility scale, create increased cohesion, social order and trust.
As Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applies to human-beings, perhaps a similar hierarchy could be applied to cities. What would the cities equivalent of “self actualization” look like? The earliest of cities were created because they made economic sense but also sanitary sense. There’s a need for reliable infrastructure, safety, jobs, economic viability but then what? As the urban landscape evolved from the sanitary city of the 1800s to the sustainable city of the 1900s, the next evolution is towards the wellness city of the 2000s (2). We propose making cities more human-centric, including consideration of trees-as-infrastructure, would be a bit closer to a level of urban self-actualization and a wellness city of the future. The earliest of cities were created to make economic sense but also sanitary sense. Perhaps something as simple as trees, an urban canopy, can nudge us incrementally closer to the quality of life that is inalienably what we as humans aspire to.
*Note: This piece of writing was originally created in 2017 with hopes of putting various ideas and reflections on paper in a cohesive form. The article: “Trees are Infrastructure too: A theory of the urban canopy catalyzing movement towards the more human-centric, wellness-oriented, and self-actualized city” was the outcome. Much time has lapsed since the reflection. Rewilding of cities, boosts in trees and nature in cities, and Nature-based-Solutions (NbS) plus adding elements back to the cityscape that promotes restoration and well-being have gained increasing attention but there is still much work to be done.
References:
1. Cubicles don’t work. How architectural design affects your Brain; Scott Wyatt; TEDxSeattle; Published Jan 10, 2017; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkJCpD0_V0
2. The Baltimore School of Urban Ecology: Space, Scale, and Time for the Study of Cities; Gary E. Machlis, J. Morgan Grove, Mary Cadenasso, Steward T. Pickett, and William R. Burch; 2015
3. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2016/01/call-to-wild-text This is your brain on nature [Jan 2016]
4. https://mitpress.mit.edu/distracted
5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/broken-windows-theory
6. Science of “forest bathing”: fewer maladies, more well-being?; Kirsten Dirksen; Published on May 29, 2016; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jPNll1Ccn0