00:00The way it works is for every school, workplace and home, we should be able to see three trees
00:08from our windows.
00:10We should have 30% canopy in the neighbourhoods directly around us, and we should be able
00:14to walk 300 metres or less to a park.
00:17All of the cities that we looked at really struggled on this test.
00:21We saw a very interesting pattern, including in inner city, inner Sydney and inner Melbourne.
00:26Most buildings actually do have a view to three trees.
00:29However, you look at the park test, it's a bit more mixed in cities, including our cities,
00:35but the one that we all seem to fail on, and fail quite badly, is this 30% test.
00:41That is, we just often have more like 10, 15, 20% canopy in our neighbourhoods.
00:48We found that very interesting because you can see the trees, but you're not getting
00:51the shade.
00:53The big takeaway there for us is that trees are probably too small in the cities that
00:57we live in.
00:58There are really three areas in which it's currently quite a struggle if you're a tree
01:02in cities, or if you're an urban forester trying to get trees into cities.
01:06Firstly, planting new trees is really quite difficult because cables and cars have significant
01:12legal rights in cities.
01:13Our streets are really quite dedicated to utility infrastructure and traffic.
01:17You want to put a tree into that mix, it can actually be really quite difficult.
01:21So there's a lot of red tape holding back tree planting in our cities.
01:25The second thing is, once you get that tree in the ground, often councils, they are not
01:29cashed up, so they can just about afford to cut a hole in the footpath, put that tree
01:33in the hole, put a little bit of soil over it, and hope that it will do well.
01:38Those planting conditions are not really conducive to getting big, healthy trees.
01:43Finally, once you've got your tree in the ground, once it's starting to grow, especially
01:46in cities, trees have a shocking mortality rate.
01:48We actually pull trees out at high rates, and that's partly because of property development,
01:53which leads to tree removals, but also partly because of residents, who quite successfully
01:57can lobby for tree removals.
Comments