Demonstrating Community Values of Urban Forests

This project reported on the differences in perceptions of urban forests by people in older and newer neighborhoods.

Most Americans live in urban areas where there is an ongoing struggle to balance development that supports human existence with the quality of life characteristics that sustain existence. Trees and undeveloped open space amongst the hard surfaces of roads and buildings has often been cited as a key quality of life characteristic. Typically people desire some integration of "nature" in the cities and neighborhoods in which they dwell.

Older more mature neighborhoods that are maintained often lend character and charm to communities and are desirable places to live because of these qualities. Some new suburbs can seem austere by comparison and it often takes years for them to achieve the same status within a community. Building practices may contribute to this austerity given that it is often more costly to build around existing mature vegetation than to remove it and start anew with small immature trees. The purpose of this project was to determine how people perceive urban forests (trees and undeveloped open space) in older and newer neighborhoods given these common differences. The hope was that perceptual data from older and newer neighborhoods could shed light on how residents viewed the existence of trees and open space relative to their immediate surroundings and thus their quality of life. Implications of these perceptions can relate to community development policy (e.g., new suburbs, urban renewal).

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