It seems like everything we really love about Seattle is slipping away - the social and economic diversity, the older buildings that give our neighborhoods their distinctive character, the trees and the green spaces.
Those big buildings sprouting up everywhere embody the forces at work. Whether it's gargantuan single-family homes squeezed between one-story bungalows, or three-story townhomes with garages downstairs and paved-over yards, these new buildings with their stratospheric prices have displaced working-class families, immigrants and renters in the Section 8 program along with others living below the median income. In their blandness and bulk, they dominate the more modest and (to us anyway) more pleasing structures that integrated well with the existing character of the community. And, of course, any and all trees on these redeveloped lots had to go.
Whether it's several hundred trees removed at a time to redevelop Seattle Housing Authority's properties at Rainier Vista, Holly Park, and High Point, or trees on single lots that got in the way of bigger structures, Seattle's urban forest is falling victim to the relentless growth courted and rewarded by city government land-use policies.
Our urban forest consists of all the trees in the city on both public and private property, including street trees, park trees, greenbelts and trees on institutional campuses.
Taken in the aggregate, the urban forest performs valuable public services that went unrecognized for years. Trees regulate stormwater by capturing run-off, preventing or mitigating flooding. They cleanse the air by removing many thousands of pounds of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone and particulate matter from the atmosphere every year.
Their shade cools buildings in the summer, reducing the need for air conditioning. Lately, their ability to isolate and store carbon has been recognized as a key factor in combating global warming. People spend more money in shopping districts with trees, offices have higher occupancy rates in building with trees, children do better in school and hospital patients recover more quickly when they can look out at trees.
Check out Mayor Greg Nickels' proposed Urban Forest Management Plan, which goes before Seattle City Council for approval later this year. To read the plan you'd think the mayor had got religion about trees. The plan notes that, according to aerial surveys, the portion of Seattle covered by tree canopy has declined from 30 percent to 18 percent between 1972 and 1999, costing the city about $1.5 million per year in stormwater storage costs and air pollution-related health care costs.
Accordingly the plan calls for a goal of restoring a 30 percent canopy cover in 30 years. This means increasing the total number of trees in Seattle from 1.3 million to 2.2 million, which includes planting 649,000 new trees. Despite the significant costs of planting and maintenance, the plan's authors calculate a net public benefit of over $44 million a year.
We'd feel a lot more encouraged by the mayor's Urban Forest Management Plan if it weren't for a history of under funding, a lack of public input, and the glaring contradiction between the plan's goals and the underlying philosophy of the Nickels administration.
Trees need regular watering in their early years and pruning in their later years. Left alone, our greenbelts strangle under ivy. The city has shown a decided lack of commitment to adequate staffing for tree crews and arborists. As the plan points out, more frequent maintenance would actually save the city money over time. But from one annual budget to the next, short-term cost savings win out over long-term investments.
The misnamed Seattle Urban Forest Coalition, which drafted the Urban Forest Management Plan, is composed exclusively of city staff. The Emerald City Task Force, supposedly a citizens' advisory committee, consists (so far) of developers, with no representation of environmental or neighborhood groups. Hopefully this will be rectified by city council appointing some task force members instead of leaving it up to the mayor.
But our greatest problem with the Urban Forest Management Plan is that its ideals seem so out of sync with the land-use decisions coming from the mayor and council majority. Upzoning creates incentives to tear down smaller buildings that covered less of the lot and put up bigger, bulkier buildings with no room for trees. Eliminating setback requirements means, again, no room for trees. Allowing DADU's (Detached Accessory Dwelling Units) in single-family neighborhoods adds to the problem, and those monster houses and townhouses sprouting up on your street definitely leave no room for trees.
When it comes to tree preservation, it's on private property that the rubber meets the road. Almost three-quarters of Seattle's land-base is privately owned. Of Seattle's 1.3 million trees, less than half are in city parks. If we as a city aren't willing to take a stand on the public value of trees on private property, there's not much hope for our urban forest.
The Urban Forest Management Plan suggests measures like these used by other cities:
• Restrict removal of large trees on private property
• Require one tree to be planted for a given number of on-street parking stalls
• Require site plans for building permit applications to locate significant trees on adjacent properties to ensure these trees aren't damaged or destroyed during development.
• Maximize the amount of plantable space in new development for trees.
• Apply tree removal enforcement tools consistently across the city.
Quite frankly, we're not sure the city has the guts to implement these regulations. Developers will complain that such rules impede their ability to build affordable housing, and we'll be confronted, yet again, with the false choice of trees vs. low-cost housing.
Just as with housing, we must start with policies that preserve our existing trees and accommodate only the level of growth that allows us to do that. We do not have to sacrifice Seattle's physical or social character to meet our regional growth targets and contain sprawl.
When our local politicians talk about density, more often than not it means cramming growth into vulnerable, lower-income communities as if trees were a luxury for the wealthy. We all deserve storm water retention, air pollution mitigation and the shade and beauty that trees provide.
John V. Fox and Carolee Colter, of the Seattle Displacement Coalition,may be reached at this link..
