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Grow Boston Greener Campaign Featured in the Dorchester Reporter

An August 16th article in The Dorchester Reporter, "New Trees Adding to DOT Canopy", highlights the early and exciting progress of UEI's efforts on behalf of Boston's "Grow Boston Greener" campaign. As part of Boston's Urban Forest Coalition, UEI will help plant 100,000 new trees in the city by 2020, concentrating efforts on those neighborhoods in greatest need of increased tree canopy. The Reporter article (at the link below), focuses on how UEI programs like CityRoots help neighborhood volunteers and community groups participate in this historic campaign.

http://www.dotnews.com/dotcanopy.html

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“Grow Boston Greener” featured in August 1, 2007 Christian Science Monitor article on urban trees. Click here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0801/p13s01-sten.html

The article details the many benefits of urban trees as well as the many challenges involved in urban planting programs, and highlights the work of the Urban Ecology Institute and Boston’s Urban Forest Coalition. UEI and partner organizations such as Earthworks are committed to making the vision of Grow Boston Greener—100,000 new trees in Boston by 2020—a reality.

You can also view the article at the USA Today website, here:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2007-08-01-hitech-trees_N.htm

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NY Times Columnist Richard Conniff Cites Initiative in the Greening of Urban America and Provides Link to the Urban Ecology Institute


In his June 11, 2007 NY Times Select column “Basic Instincts” reporter and nature writer Richard Conniff (author of The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide and The Ape in the Corner Office, and writer for Smithsonian, The Atlantic and National Geographic) offers his thoughts on “The Greening of the Urban Animal” on the occasion of the majority of humans living in cities for the first time in history. (According to United Nations’ researchers, that epochal shift occurred—statistically, at any rate—on May 23rd, 2007.)

Conniff spoke at length to UEI’s Executive Director Charlie Lord in preparation for this article, and within it he links readers directly to UEI’s website, mentions several of UEI’s Urban Ecology Collaborative partner organizations (such as Baltimore’s Parks and People and Washington D.C.’s Casey Trees), and extensively cites the studies that inform much of UEI’s work in urban environmental justice. As UEI’s forthcoming Neighborhood Wellness initiative recognizes, these studies demonstrate links between healthy urban ecosystems and healthy, safe urban neighborhoods.

As Conniff writes,
“In the public housing projects of Chicago, for instance, studies have consistently shown that trees make for healthier neighborhoods, with more people spending time outdoors and more kids playing in creative ways. Housing projects with trees also have about 7 percent less crime than their treeless counterparts. Partly that’s just a function of having more eyes outside watching. But domestic violence also drops, suggesting that there’s something deeper going on here. Human nature exhales in the presence of leafy things.”

Alluding to Boston’s historic “Grow Boston Greener” effort to plant 100,000 new trees, especially in environmental justice neighborhoods, Conniff observes

“Cities are also getting into the act, with ‘urban ecology’ programs that often pay for the plants, but get local residents to wield the shovels and watering cans.”

Long-time UEI observers know that he’s referring at least in part to programs such as our CityRoots and Yard to Oasis programs, as well as to the Grow Boston Greener project that has brought UEI together with the City of Boston and with other members of Boston’s Urban Forest Coalition to improve the health and number of Boston’s urban trees and confer more of the benefits of trees and greenspace on more—and more diverse—urban neighborhoods. (Click here for more information on Grow Boston Greener and links to the City’s volunteer site for that initiative; click here for more information on UEI’s CityRoots program.)

UEI is happy to share the news of this coverage with you. Read the complete article at this link:

http://conniff.blogs.nytimes.com/

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A plan takes root: City to plant more than 100,000 trees

The Boston Globe reports that "Boston will plant 100,000 trees in the next 13 years, with the bulk of the plantings to take place in the city's least green neighborhoods, Mayor Thomas M. Menino" announced April 28th.

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Cities Can Be Sociable as Suburbs

An article by UEI Executive Director, Charlie Lord, appears in Commonwealth Magazine.
Commonwealth Correspondence


"A New Science for Revitalizing America's Cities"

With more than half the world's population living in cities, we must learn how to assure sustainable urban ecologies, according to Eric Strauss, director of the Environmental Studies Program.
View full article on Boston College Magazine's Front Page

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Executive Director of the Urban Ecology Institute Named Co-Principle Investigator of the Baltimore Ecosystem Project of the National Science Foundation