Why Dear Trees Really Are Dear

A year ago, I wrote about the plight of urban trees. At the time, I never imagined we'd have a solution as far-sighted as this:

A plane tree in central London has been valued at £750,000 under a new system that puts a "price" on trees. How?

A six-foot-wide plane in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, is thought to be the UK's most valuable tree.

Large, mature, city trees like this one are being blamed - sometimes wrongly and often fatally - for damage to neighbouring properties.

But it is hoped a new valuation system will make it harder for "expensive" trees to be felled due to doubtful suspicions they are to blame for subsidence.

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Putting a price on a tree changes people's attitudes and if developers think in financial terms, then a community asset must be valued in the same currency, he says.

So if a developer is in court for illegally destroying a tree, then the fine could be a reflection of the tree's value, says Mr Stokes. Or if a new development replaces a stock of trees then the builder could contribute to the community a sum equal to the value of that lost stock.

Brilliant. Now, if we could only apply that to all the rest - air, water, animals, plants....

Open Cities Toronto 2007

Open Cities Toronto 2007 is a weekend-long web of conversation and celebration that asks: how do we collaboratively add more open to the urban landscape we share? What happens when people working on open source, public space, open content, mash up art, and open business work together? How do we make Toronto a magnet for people playing with the open meme?

Sounds my sort of place. (Via Boing Boing.)

Enclosing the Urban Commons

You don't usually think of cities as being a commons, but here's an interesting perspective that proposes precisely that:

Community development activists, urban planners, and city government officials are increasingly taking note of a disturbing trend: escalating housing costs are forcing lower-income and working- and middle-class residents to leave our nation’s cities. Gentrification and subsequent displacement are rampant. Across the country, millions of us can no longer afford to reside in our major urban areas.

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Or, to put it in the vernacular of the commons, many of our most vibrant urban areas are being “enclosed.” Our cities which once were centers of diversity (ethnically, culturally, and in terms of income levels) are now becoming modern-day analogues to the medieval walled cities of Europe – available to the wealthy elite (and single, young, college-educated professionals with high levels of disposable incomes) while the people who make those cities function (service workers, teachers, police and firemen, city employees) must move to inner and outer-ring suburbs.