Introduction
Neither Los Angeles nor San Francisco urban forests have generated much scholarly interest and, thus, there are not too many scholarly works that pertain to the state of these forests specifically. Still, it is possible to find some studies that note merely list quantitative data provided by the United States Forest Service or Urban Forestry division or the corresponding municipalities but also analyze this data. Authors explore and identify different tendencies related to the development and state of the urban forests in some of California’s largest cities.
Main body
One common point that the scholars agree on is that California’s natural landscape consists mostly of treeless prairies, resulting in a tiny natural percentage of the tree canopy. For example, Pataki et al. (2013) point out that, in Los Angeles, “trees have been introduced to a city that was dominated by grasslands and shrublands prior to urbanization” (p. 17). The same applies to San Francisco: Simpson and MacPherson (2007) note that there are few natural forests in the San Francisco Bay region, and these are mostly concentrated along the western side of the bay. Hence, the researchers agree that the overwhelming majority of trees in the urban forests of Los Angeles and San Francisco are planted. It means that the biodiversity and the actual number of trees are almost entirely dependent on municipal policies.
Another point easily deducible for the literature is that the swift urbanization of California leaves the region’s tree canopy behind. For example, Simpson and MacPherson (2007) demonstrate that an increase in impervious services in San Francisco tends to be 1.7 times greater than the increase in tree canopy – 10 percent against 17 percent. This fact highlights the necessity of urban forest protection and expansion policies.
To summarize, the literature points out that the growth of urban forests lags behind the growth of urban areas in both Los Angeles and San Francisco and also notes the utmost importance of human activities in correcting that.
Research Question
The natural composition of Californian vegetation noted in the literature review makes the state a suitable region for the study of urban forest protection and expansion policies. In a mostly treeless area, the human effort becomes the foremost factor in planting and saving trees and, thus, its effects should be visible more clearly. Additionally, the disparity in city growth and tree canopy growth makes the preservation of urban forests an acute issue of current interest in both Los Angeles and California. These factors analyze tree protection policies in both cities a worthwhile research topic. Considering them, the research question for this proposal is:
– Did Los Angeles and San Francisco tree protection policies of the early 21st century have an effect on the number of trees (both citywide and street trees specifically) as well as the tree canopy and, if so, what was the effect?
Data Collection Plan
The research question formulated above imposes its limitation on data collection due to the nature of the information necessary for the study. Since the research aims at evaluating the effects (or lack thereof) of urban tree protection and expansion policies in Los Angeles and San Francisco on the number of trees and tree canopy, it excludes a number of potential data gathering methods. Surveys, interviews, and focus groups are unlikely to be of any use in this scenario, as they would characterize the subjective perception of the situation by the respondents rather than the objective numbers. Observations could be of limited use, especially in estimating the number of street trees. However, due to the geographic and financial constraints as well as the vast size of both cities, observations could only yield small samples that would not be representative enough for the study. As a result, the primary methods of data collection for this research proposal should be the work with the existing databases that account for the state of the urban forests, archival, and secondary research.
The technical impossibility of an independent evaluation of the number of trees in Los Angeles and San Francisco for this research makes the use of the existing databases a necessity. This research should first and foremost concentrate on the information provided by the Forest Service of the US Department of Agriculture (“US Forest Service,” 2020). As the federal agency responsible for sustaining the nation’s forests, including the urban ones, it is the natural first pick for a project like that.
Apart from that, archival research will also play a prominent role in gathering data for this project. As with the databases, the first choice is the publication archive of the Forest Service that contains numerous reports and scholarly articles from 1902 onward (“Treesearch,” 2020). Another useful source is the archive of the annual Urban Forest Reports prepared by the San Francisco Department of Environment (“Annual urban forest reports,” 2020). It covers the state of the urban forest from the first report made in 2008 to the current last one for 2019.
Finally, secondary research is also a necessary component of this study, since the information of the specific tree protection policies enacted in either city is best found not in archives or databases but, rather, in other open sources. For Los Angeles, it would be the website of the Urban Forestry Division of the city’s Bureau of Street Services (“Urban Forestry Division,” 2020). For San Francisco, it would be the website of the city’s Department of Public Works, mostly with regards to the street trees (“Street trees and plants,” n.d.). Apart from the information on tree protection policies, these sources will also supplement the database and archival research with the current data on tree numbers.
The information this research project will look for in databases, as well as the archival and other open sources, is stated in the research question itself. First of all, it is necessary to establish the tree protection policies enacted in both Los Angeles and San Francisco to evaluate their effects for lack thereof. The first and most essential criterion to estimate said effects is the overall number of trees several years before the enactment of the problem, on the date the program was enacted, and several years after. Apart from that, the number of street trees is also an important variable to consider for two reasons at once. First of all, street trees, while only combining a small percentage, are the ones denizens are most likely to encounter in their everyday lives and, thus, the ones influencing their lives most directly. Secondly, the San Francisco Department of Public Works focuses explicitly on public trees as opposed to trees in general, which is why including this variable is suitable to characterize the city’s policies (“Street Trees and Plants,”n.d.) Finally, the tree canopy should also be taken into consideration as a variable.
As this research intends to evaluate the tree protection policies in Los Angeles and San Francisco based on numerical criteria, it is quantitative by its very design. The simple research question does not call for any advanced analysis techniques, as it merely requires evaluating the dynamic changes in tree numbers and, ideally, tree canopy, before and after the enactment of certain policies. Simple descriptive statistics would suffice for this purpose.
The results of the research would be best represented as graphs demonstrating the changes in the main variables listed in the previous paragraph. One graph should illustrate the overall number of trees seven years prior to the enactment of the tree protection policies, at the year of their enactment, and seven years after. Another graph will do the same for the number of street trees specifically, and the third one will demonstrate the changes in the tree canopy. Such an analysis will allow estimating whether the tree protection policies had any effect on the dynamic of change in these three variables. The study period is 2004-2018 for Los Angeles and 2003-2017 for San Francisco, with the dates of the enactment of policies being 2011 and 2010, respectively.
Timeframe for the Study
The estimated timeframe for this study is four weeks. Since all the sources listed above are easily accessible as websites, data collection should not be either too difficult or time-consuming. However, the tree protection policies of Los Angeles and San Francisco focus on different aspects characterizing the well-being of their respective urban forests. These are the number of trees in general and tree canopy for Los Angeles, and the number of street trees for San Francisco. These priorities are reflected in the documentation illustrating the state of urban forests in both cities, meaning that the information on some variables for one of the cities may be hard to find or even inaccessible. For this reason, the estimated data collection time is two weeks.
Data analysis time will depend on the type and volume of the information gathered. As mentioned above, the information of some variables for one or another city may prove too limited to draw meaningful comparisons due to the different focus of the policies. It is feasible to assume that the research will have to be limited to the general tree number and tree canopy for Los Angeles and street tree numbers for San Francisco. Considering this possibility, the estimated data analysis time is two weeks.
Implications for Planning Practice
The implications of this research for planning practice are inherent in its very design. The purpose of the research is to evaluate the effectiveness – or lack thereof – of the tree protection policies enacted in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The results of the research will demonstrate whether the approach taken in any of these cities is efficient in terms of increasing the overall number of trees, the number of street trees, and the tree canopy. More importantly still, they will demonstrate whether these policies have any impact on the dynamics of change in any of these three variables. Therefore, this research will inform urban ecological planners whether the tree protection policies of Los Angeles and San Francisco are efficient, whether they require improvements or merit implementation in other contexts.
Interdisciplinary Implications
Apart from its implication for urban ecological planning, this research may also be of use in other disciplines. For instance, it may prove valuable from a historical perspective. As mentioned above, research design requires tracing the development dynamics of the cities’ urban forests throughout fourteen years. Still, a fourteen-year period is relatively small when compared to the entire history of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The ecological focus in urban planning may be a relatively recent development, but its chronological span also transcends the period studied in this project. Therefore, the findings of this research illustrate a specific period in the history of urban ecological planning as applied in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Therefore, one may use it to supplement the information on other periods and create a comprehensive history of urban ecological planning in either of these cities. This is how the results of this research may have implications in the field of history.
Conclusion
Apart from that, the findings may also be of interest for political scientists. This project studies the efficiency or lack thereof of tree protection policies, which, by itself, demonstrates that tree protection is recognized as a political priority. It is worth mentioning that the period studied is situated well within the 21st century – a time when human-induced climate change and global warming have become widely recognized issues that require political intervention. Consequently, one may use the finding of this research to illustrate the emergence of tree protection policies. This approach would allow demonstrating how the emergence of global warming as a political issue has influenced municipal politics in some of California’s largest cities.
References
Los Angeles Bureau of Street Services (2020). Urban forestry division. Web.
San Francisco Department of Environment (2020). Annual urban forest reports. Web.
San Francisco Department of Public Works. (N.d.). Street trees and plants. Web.
Pataki, D. E., McCarthy, H. R., Gillespie, T., Generette, G. D., & Pincetl, S. (2013). A trait-based ecology of the Los Angeles urban forest. Ecosphere, 4(6), 1-20.
Simpson, J. R., & McPherson, E. G. (2007). San Francisco Bay area state of the urban forest final report. Center for Urban Forest Research.
US Department of Agriculture. (2020). Treesearch. Web.
US Department of Agriculture. (2020). US Forest Service. Web.