Planning for Urban and Community Forestry

The American Planning Association, in close collaboration with the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) and American Forests (AF), will prepare a state-of-the-art best practices manual about how urban and community forestry can best be integrated into long-range and current municipal planning activities in the U.S.

The Problem of Declining Urban Forests

Urban forests provide enormous environmental benefits — among them improving air and water quality and slowing stormwater runoff. Yet, tree canopy in many U.S. metropolitan areas has declined significantly over the last few decades. The national organization American Forests has analyzed tree cover in more than a dozen metropolitan areas and documented changes. Over the last 15 years, naturally forested areas of the country east of the Mississippi River and in the Pacific Northwest have lost 25 percent of their canopy cover while impervious surfaces increased about 20 percent. Theses changes have ecological and economic impacts on air and water systems. Communities can offset the ecological impact of land development by utilizing the urban forest's natural capacity to mitigate environmental impacts. More: http://www.planning.org/forestry/