Emerald cities - mayors who promote green cities

Across America, mayors are finding more trees means more votes.

Everyone knows trees help clean the air, moderate temperatures, dampen flooding, boost real estate values, shelter wildlife, and enhance the scenery.

But do they win votes? Some of America's most dynamic mayors think so.

From Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a self-described "tree hugger" who was born on Arbor Day, to Tampa's Dick Greco, dubbed "The Green Mayor" by the Florida press, civic leaders are concluding that growing trees makes good politics.

Washington, DC, Mayor Anthony Williams won election last year in part on a promise to reverse the capital's loss of street trees. "The city gets 5 to 9 degrees hotter in the summer than the suburbs because of the lack of trees," says Jim Daugherty, an environmental lawyer who chaired Williams' environmental committee after election. "That affects our ability to compete with the suburbs for business, residential development, and tourism."

Seattle Mayor Paul Schell has joined with AMERICAN FORESTS to launch a series of ambitious urban tree planting programs to make sure "The Emerald City" lives up to its nickname. (AMERICAN FORESTS will hold its 1999 National Urban Forest Conference in Seattle August 31-September 4.) He's also following the trend of other western mayors in proposing a halt to revenue-producing logging on Seattle's 90,500-acre Cedar River watershed, a reform that should help the recovery of salmon runs.

Why trees? Since taking office in 1989 Chicago's Daley has overseen the planting of more than 200,000 trees in the city as part of a public works renaissance. "Talk about a tree person! Right here! I'm a tree hugger!" he exclaimed at a press conference last year. He sees trees as a way of both softening the city's rough edges and expressing faith in Chicago's future.

"Chicago's city motto is 'Urbs in Horto,' which means 'City in a Garden,'" Daley explains. "Visitors to Chicago often express amazement at the beauty of this city and one reason - though they may not be totally aware of it - is the abundance of trees."

"Planting a tree is the ultimate act of love," adds the aptly named Forrest Claypool, general superintendent of the Chicago Park District. "The person who plants it never really gets the full benefit of that tree. Some future generation gets it."

Chicago lost thousands of trees and shrubs in past decades to Dutch elm disease, to Cold War anti-aircraft missile batteries in Lincoln and Jackson Parks, and to deliberate thinning done to fight crime. The city is currently battling an invasion of Asian longhorned beetle.

The trend is definitely toward greener cities and for solid sociological reasons. Crime and urban violence actually go down in neighborhoods where trees go up, according to studies by the University of Chicago at Urbana-Champaign and Chicago Housing Authority.

The city has created a number of organizations to train and promote citizen tree planting and care, including Treekeepers (a seven-week tree-care course) and Greencorps Chicago, which works with neighborhood community groups to provide trees, training, and jobs.

In Washington, DC, Mayor Williams' hope of regreening poorer neighborhoods is long overdue. Under his predecessors, city government spent less than a third as much per capita - $4.99 - on tree planting as does Minneapolis, the nation's big-city leader at $16.54. While the capital averages a loss of 5,000 trees a year to age and disease, about 5 percent of the street tree total, it has replanted only a tenth of that.

Williams wants to bring the urban forest back. To support him, the federal Department of the Interior early this year pledged $5million annually to replant trees and erase graffiti in the District of Columbia's federal parks.

Model Minneapolis, with 250,000 street trees, started its ambitious tree-planting program in response to an onslaught of Dutch elm disease two decades ago, winning a $60 million state matching fund. An emergency effort to replace 30,000 elms a year at the height of the disease has matured to a $6 million-per-year effort to plant 4,000 trees each spring, says Ralph Sievert, director of forestry for the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board. The program is so popular that Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton included tree maintenance on her priority list in a recent "state-of-the-city" address.

The city particularly looks for planting opportunities in poorer neighborhoods and uses the community boards of 80 district neighborhoods to recommend tree placement. "They take a lot of pride in it," Sievert says.

Tampa's "Mayor's Beautification Program" started under Mayor Sandy Freedman in 1989 and now has a permanent three-member staff and 60-member board. Executive Director Bonnie Moore calls current mayor Dick Greco "spectacular" in his plans for up to five new parks, plus a continuing commitment to a streetscape that includes not just trees but shrubs, mulch, sod, and maintenance. The program's first planting attracted 300 volunteers to plant 300 trees. By last year it was drawing 3,500 volunteers who planted 36,000 trees and tens of thousands of smaller plantings.