Trees and Community
This past weekend, I helped host a community tree event. The event was to do follow-up maintenance on trees we planted 10 months ago. Each time I do one of these events, I think about how it relates to community issues.
In case you are wondering, follow up tree-care is a vital step to ensuring trees make it in the urban environment, which is very difficult for trees. Also, the city does not have sufficient funding to maintain all the trees in the city. Someone has to ensure the trees planted actually make it. This is where the community comes in. Not only can they keep the closest eye on trees in their neighborhood, their participation helps the social health of the community.
During the event, I found myself conversing with other event volunteers about how wonderful it is to do tree care as a community event. Not only are community members invited to attend the event to check up on their street trees and to learn how to care for them, but when we work on the street, people cannot help but notice what we are doing. Sometimes they stop and join in the activity. Sometimes they stop to talk, find out more, and thank us for what we are doing. Sometimes they just look, but it probably gets them thinking. For everyone who participates, it builds a sense of belonging, responsibility, and connection to the people around us and to the streets on which we live.
We all know that the government cannot, and probably should not, do everything for us. The government extends only so far. In our city, it will pay for trees to be planted, but does not have the resources to take care of them all. At the same time, we notice social problems in our urban environments. What if we had well established systems of community participation where all residents actually did their part to contribute to improving the neighborhood, especially to compensate for lack of governmental resources/services? I think this would go a long way to improving social responsibility and connection in our neighborhoods. Could our City Council Representative do more to encourage this type of activity?
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Yes, our City representatives can do more to encourage these types of activities. It will involve a renewed focus on communities and the details within them to foster civic participation and engagement. The goal of City government largely should be to build the capacity of communities to work together on great projects like your Tree Care event last Saturday.
Comment by Gary Slossberg — January 16, 2009 @ 11:09 am
[...] a tree care event with your best friends. Water, mulch and trim the trees in your [...]
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