Ten minutes with Roddy Shaw
Trees for Cities senior development manager Roddy Shaw discusses the importance of trees for the environment, people and public spaces.
How can trees protect the urban environment?
Everyone knows about the carbon benefits in which they bring. But, they also lower noise pollution by softening the landscape, they’ve also been shown to slow traffic and make roads safer. Trees can cool down the air through not only shading, and evapotranspiration – which is the very fancy word for how they move water from their roots up to their leaves and expel it out.
As we’re seeing urban spaces get hotter and drier, that benefit is really moving from something nice to have to something quite essential when it comes to protecting urban spaces. At the other end of the spectrum, they can also play a role in flood protection and water attenuation. For example, sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS). Incorporating trees can help slow the flow of water, can help with excess runoff from hard areas, and that then has further knock on impacts for the protection of buildings. They’re also an absolute lifeline for city dwelling insects and the biodiversity benefits which they can bring to everything we share the planet with.
How can public spaces incorporate trees?
One of the biggest things is incorporating trees from the start. It’s much easier to get them in as early as possible in a project, as opposed to any kind of retrofit or afterthought. There is a guiding principle in urban forestry, which is recently developing, called 3-30-300 and this states that everyone should be able to see three trees from the window of where they kind of live or work. There should be 30% canopy cover in neighbourhoods, and no one should be more than 300 meters from the nearest green space.
It also goes beyond the numeric side of things. We need to think about what we’re seeing in terms of climate change. Not just about what’s going to survive now, but what’s going to survive in 20 – 30 plus years time. It does take a couple decades for trees to really get up and running and deliver their ecosystem benefits. Some of the climate predictions need to be taken into account when you’re choosing the species and making sure that it’s going to be able to handle not just this climate, but what we’re going to be facing in a number of years.
White Hart Lane. Credit: Saorise Clohessy
Why do trees improve someone’s life?
Right at the top, they’re giving us oxygen. I mean, if that isn’t a good enough reason to cut them some slack and look after them – it’s right there. Of course the benefits they bring to mental health, they’re also proven to reduce childhood asthma. One of the social benefits, which is sometimes a little bit harder to capture, is just the inherent togetherness which they can bring. We’ve got a scheme where residents of a street can sponsor streets outside where they live. Trees can become a form of rallying people together through planting as a community. All urban tree projects, in order to be successful, should look to engage the community as much as possible, from top to bottom.
Why does the urban environment need a charity like Trees for Cities?
Urban areas without trees are pretty lifeless. It can be that need for a link between the community and the local authority or the planners. Urban forestry is a ‘tree thing’ which involves people, or a ‘people thing’, which involves trees. I think it’s important to prioritise people first, and make sure that whatever you’re looking to do includes the local community, We’re the urban tree charity in the UK, but there are towns and cities where we’d love to have more of a presence and be able to help people engage with their urban trees.
King George V playing fields. Credit: Julian Heward
What do trees mean for the planet?
I mean, it kind of starts with everything. They are such a foundational pillar for not just ourselves in urban environments, but wildlife further afield and everything else. It’s not necessarily just about planting new trees and getting that in, but protecting the ones which we’ve already got.
When it comes to planning, or the redevelopment of public spaces as well, the idea of removing trees to replace it with two or three, you might be removing something which is huge, which has cultural value, which is providing far more ecosystem benefits than anything else that you could put in for years to come. The trees which are here already, not just the ones which we can incorporate, or when we see these planting targets, or people saying they’re going to plant x amount of trees. It’s about protecting those which we already have as much as possible.
What is your favourite tree?
I would love to see the absolutely massive redwood trees that are in America. the huge skyscraper size things.
In terms of what we’ve got in the UK, I originally, or for a long time, it’s always been oak, but I’ve recently found myself quite drawn to a tree called the Caucasian wingnut tree, which I’ve never noticed or anything before. It’s got a short stem and huge branches that’s like an umbrella and spreads miles, delivering a massive amount of shade. They’re just taking my fancy at the moment.