Urban Trees: Dead on Arrival

Whenever another sliver of Tacoma is redeveloped, tree fans have reason to hope. That's because, of all the tools that cities can use to incentivize tree planting, the development code is the main one that the City of Tacoma is actually using to some good effect.

Tearing down an abandoned house and building an apartment? Your design plan has to have street trees!

Turning a parking lot into a business? The design code tells you how many trees you need to plant and what size they need to be at maturity!

New buildings often come with new landscaping, and that is by design. The Tacoma Municipal Code states that "Unless specifically exempted, landscaping shall be provided consistent with [Title 13.06.090.B] for all new development, including structures and/or parking lots, as well as alterations to existing development, and street improvements..."

So because owners and developers have to check some landscaping boxes during the building process, that construction window represents the best chance the City has to dictate how our cityscape looks. Will the landscape become greener or grayer? Hotter or shadier? Life-giving or death-causing?

You'll notice this as you travel around town, how new construction is usually framed by some perky-looking greenery. It's kind of nice! And it's right there in the code! In other words, it's the law!

Ah, but there's a catch! Two, actually.

The first is that although a property owner or developer is required to have those trees installed, there is absolutely no requirement to keep them alive. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ There's no six-month checkup, no one-year circle-back, no five-year survival celebration. You literally just have to buy a few trees of certain sizes and species and have them in the ground when the permitting person drops by. This is good enough for the City of Tacoma!

At some of the newest apartment buildings in downtown—a neighborhood where tree canopy coverage is about one third of the city average—many new trees are already dead from lack of care. Some have even been cut to stumps, and the property owners know they will never be required to replace them. The landscaping box has already been checked. So hundreds of people will move into brand new apartments with no hope of ever having a shady street to enjoy with their families. Frankly, it's a disgrace.

But perhaps the bigger catch is what happens prior to construction. Because Tacoma has no tree preservation ordinance, the first step for most developments is to chop down every tree on site. To developers in this recovering lumber town, clearcutting a site appears clean and efficient. It's the appeal of the blank slate. This tends to be true not only of mature trees on private property, where no tree removal permit is required, but also those "street trees" in the public right-of-way, where cutting without a permit is technically illegal but rarely punished.

That's why it's so infuriating to see brand new building projects fall short of the City's legal requirements for what the finished products should look like. In a city whose main tree codes were adopted in the 1920s, our only hope lies with the adoption and enforcement of modern design standards and best practices that should make the city greener as it grows.

At Tacoma Tree Foundation, we are doing our part to help grow the urban forest in an equitable way. But all of our work will barely make a dent if the City of Tacoma does not adopt common-sense regulations (and stable program funding) that align with its adopted policies, urgent rhetoric, and lofty goals.