An urban forest plan for New York City by WXY was shared this week by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. The forest plan is essential to help cool New York as temperatures rise from global warming, and counteract historic inequities in lower-income neighborhoods that have less access to shade.
The plan has three facets: It’s a roadmap for preserving existing tree canopy, planting more trees, and cultivating stewards of New York City’s urban forest through resident engagement and educational programs. In each of these three pathways, WXY outlines three to five strategies to make them happen. The document contains a total of 43 individual actions for public agencies, private partners, and community stakeholders to consider.
Actions include establishing clear leadership for tree management citywide, designating a “leadership position” that will be responsible for managing the rollout of the plan, and streamlining contracts for tree planting and maintenance.
Over 8,000 New Yorkers and 23 city agencies helped inform the plan, WXY said in a statement. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Chief Climate Officer Louise Yeung, and Department of Parks & Recreation Commissioner Tricia Shimamura played important roles.
“The urban forest canopy is one of the few public systems no single agency can build alone,” affirmed WXY founding principal Claire Weisz.
“This plan is the first to treat it that way, creating a shared goal and unified framework that reaches across the city, from public agencies to private landowners,” Weisz said. “Growing the canopy over the coming years will ask something of every neighborhood, property owner, and agency, bringing everyone together in collective action.”
As of 2021, New York had approximately 7 million trees; roughly 23 percent of the city that year was covered by canopy. The forest plan’s goal is to increase New York’s canopy coverage to 30 percent by 2040.
New York needs to accelerate its efforts: At current growth rates, WXY said, the city won’t achieve 30 percent coverage until 2055 or later. So the urban forest plan is aimed at speeding things up.
“Most infrastructure starts depreciating the day it’s built. A tree does the opposite,” WXY principal Adam Lubinsky said. “A street tree at 20 years old is doing far more work than one at five by cooling more sidewalks and absorbing more stormwater every year it grows. That’s one of the shifts when you treat the canopy as infrastructure—the return becomes greater with time.”
“New York has always been defined by the dreams we dare to build together. Today, we’re planting those dreams in the soil itself,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. “The Urban Forest Plan is a commitment that no matter your neighborhood, you deserve clean air, shade in the heat of summer, and streets that reflect the possibility of our great city.”
New York isn’t the first city to think about how to better shade streets. Other cities that have commissioned urban forest plans are Boston, led by Stoss Landscape Urbanism; Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Reed Hilderbrand; Philadelphia by the Hinge Collective; and San Francisco.