Motivating Urban Tree Planting

Imagine a scorching hot summer day in the city. The pavement radiates heat, the air feels heavy, and you struggle to stay hydrated. Everywhere you look, all you see is concrete and steel, reflecting the beaming sun onto you. You search for relief from the blistering heat and stumble upon a small urban park. Sitting on a park bench under a tree, you can finally breathe.

Green space in cities isn’t just a luxury. Urban trees deliver measurable social, environmental, and economic benefits. They can lower city temperatures, improve air quality, encourage healthy behaviors, and provide spaces for the community to gather. Despite the clear, evidence-backed benefits of urban tree planting, the case for green areas has to compete with other city priorities and infrastructure, such as sidewalks, utilities, or new high-rise buildings. Continued urban development often leads to fewer trees being planted in cities—trading long-term environmental and social gains for financial returns.

Even when funding is acquired and space is designated for tree planting, environmental organizations run into another issue: a lack of community involvement. Many initiatives fail to consider the specific and unique needs of diverse communities in their planning process. As a result, communities often don’t buy into the value of urban green spaces, leading to low participation rates in planting initiatives and limited follow-through in caring for new trees. 

For us to realize the benefits of urban tree planting, we must motivate communities to value them, nurture them, and fight for them. In turn, this will lead to better-designed programs and sustained impact for the neighborhoods that need them most. By understanding how people make decisions—what motivates organizations to invest funds, what makes actions feel meaningful, and what leads to a sense of shared responsibility—we can design interventions that bridge the gap between policy and practice.