The Unexpected Comeback of the Trees

Finally, some good news for a change. Trees are making a comeback in Los Angeles. Not a huge comeback, mind you, but enough to raise the spirits. In their own small way, trees are on the march.

Maybe you are asking why trees need a comeback. After all, isn’t Los Angeles the great, prototypic suburban city of the 20th century and home of more backyard acacias and sweet gums than can be counted?

True, true. The problem lies not in our backyards but in our public spaces. Have you walked the streets of downtown recently? Or any shopping district in the city? Or any elementary schoolyard? Then you understand the nature of the problem.

Officially, it seems, trees are treated as vermin in Los Angeles. They have been expunged from most thoroughfares. And when they are allowed to grow at all, their limbs get chopped piteously by the so-called “pruning” exercises of chain-saw crews until they look like amputees.

I have a correspondent, a tree-loving man, who regularly sends me photographs of trees whose limbs have been thusly severed. The photos make a sad collection. The trees are stripped of every leaf, mournfully trying to carry on with their lives.

“Sometimes they chop them because the merchants complain about the trees blocking their signage,” says Alexander Man, my correspondent.

Signage!

Other times, he says, the crews claim they don’t have the time to carry out civilized prunings, so they bring their cherry pickers and begin sawing down to the nubs.

If you want to see the contrast presented by a tree-loving city, just check out Pasadena. I cannot swear by this, but the city fathers of Pasadena seem to recognize the sweetness and dignity that trees can bring to the hard streets of a city, and they treat them right. You see big, public trees everywhere in Pasadena.

But I digress from today’s subject. However unfortunate the past, trees have seen a turnaround over the last few months in Los Angeles, and it appears officials have begun to reconsider their old attitudes.

First and foremost was the decision by L.A. Unified to bring back trees and grass to 400 school campuses, tearing out huge expanses of asphalt. Technically speaking, this decision was not made by the city, but it was promoted relentlessly by Steven L. Soboroff, Mayor Riordan’s emissary to the school board. Soboroff still enthuses about the tree plan, reminding people that it amounts to the largest landscaping project in Los Angeles history.

Second, the county Board of Supervisors announced that it may join the city in requiring parking lots to contain at least 50% tree cover. Friends, think about this. We are talking about building parking lots where shade is generally available.

Third, a whole herd of local agencies has supported a study by TreePeople to remake the landscapes around everything from mini-malls to apartment buildings. The first demonstration project emanating from this study--a house that stores rainwater to feed its trees and grass--will be unveiled in the next few weeks.

Sure, these developments will make the city a prettier place. But the tree issue goes much further than that. Over the last decade, various studies have shown that trees bring huge, and sometimes unexpected, benefits to the specific neighborhoods where they grow.

Take air pollution, for example. The tiny particulates from diesel soot and other sources are now known to pose cancer risks to those who breathe them chronically. Los Angeles--naturally--has the highest particulate levels of any city in the country.

Guess what clears out particulates? Trees. And we’re not talking about some puny cleanup. One study found that big trees lining both sides of a street could reduce particulate levels along that street by two-thirds.

Trees also act as powerful air conditioners by emitting cooling moisture. One large tree has been shown to have the same cooling effect as 15 room-size air conditioners. So, if you have a dozen big trees along the sidewalks of your block, you are receiving the cooling benefit of 180 air conditioners blowing onto your lawn.

“Historically, we’ve treated trees the way we treat women,” says Andy Lipkis, the founder of TreePeople. “Their value came from the way they looked. No one cared about the work that trees do, or how well they did it.”

Interestingly enough, trees and grass also tend to change human behavior. Two years ago, Castle Heights Elementary near Rancho Park pioneered the technique that will soon be employed throughout the school district: One-third of the asphalt was ripped out and replaced with a lawn and trees.

Sandie Carter, the principal at Castle Heights, strolled over the green playground the other day. She likes it, she said, because the kids play differently than on asphalt.

“They roll around, dig in the grass, look for bugs,” she said. “They’re calmer and less aggressive towards each other. The play is much freer, more creative. They invent more.”

Actually it’s obvious, no? Just as it’s obvious that trees lend a sense of dignity to city streets and cool people from the summer heat. That they can change the very nature of a neighborhood. And yet we’ve ignored the obvious for decades.

It inspires the old question about Los Angeles: Why have we shown such contempt for the public places in our city, as if our streets and sidewalks were not worth small favors like trees?

Lipkis of TreePeople believes it may stem from the nature of Los Angeles itself. “You’ve got this huge, split-up place and it seems like there’s no way that a person can make a difference,” he says. “The city seems to say to people: ‘You didn’t make this place and you can’t change it, so don’t even try.’ ”

It’s as good a theory as any. But today we’re being upbeat, so let’s propose that the city just may have turned a small corner.

Soboroff thinks we have. “The schools project represents a massive change,” he says. “There will be grass and trees around the classrooms instead of asphalt. We think we are doing God’s work.”

As Soboroff says, the school project is huge. Twenty million square feet of asphalt will be taken out. Trees will be planted around school buildings, shading the buildings and reducing air conditioning costs enough to pay for maintenance of the lawns and trees.

The ongoing study by TreePeople could, in effect, extend the same idea to other parts of the city. And go further yet by suggesting that we could actually collect rainwater--rather than sending it down the L.A. River--to make the city a greener place.

Lordy. Sounds like something Portland would do. But this is still Los Angeles, so we shall see. Around here, a little good news goes a long way.