Assessing the Benefits and Costs of the Urban Forest

TLDR

Urban trees and forests offer a range of benefits—including improved environmental quality, cost savings on urban services, and enhanced individual and community wellbeing—yet past planning has underestimated these advantages and their linkages to forest characteristics. This study argues that urban forestry planning must prioritize understanding how forests can best meet people’s needs and guide management accordingly.

Abstract

With effective planning and management, urban trees and forests will provide a wide range of important benefits to urbanites. These include a more pleasant, healthful, and comfortable environment to live, work, and play in, savings in the costs of providing a wide range of urban services, and substantial improvements in individual and community wellbeing. Urban forestry plans should begin with consideration of the contribution that trees and forests can make to people's needs. Planning and management efforts should focus on how the forest can best meet those needs. Past planning and management efforts have not been as effective as they might have been because planners and managers have underestimated the potential benefits that urban trees and forests can provide, and have not understood the planning and management efforts needed to provide those benefits, particularly the linkages between benefits and characteristics of the urban forest and its management.