Brookman: City’s rezoning push at odds with desire to preserve trees

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Calgarians love their trees. Look at any photograph from the late 19th century and you will see that the landscape surrounding our city was, for all intents and purposes, a bare prairie.

It could be suggested that someone planted all the trees we enjoy now, and the huge trees that create an urban forest in many of our oldest districts were no doubt placed there by new owners from the 20th century onwards.

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There are an estimated seven million trees within Calgary’s boundaries and, as every local gardener knows, each one of them needs to be nurtured, pruned and loved. Anyone who has large trees on their property is proud of them, and many talk about them on gardening radio shows or write about them in newspapers and gardening books.

The City of Calgary has rules about cutting down trees on “city-owned” land. and is investigating options to encourage tree preservation on private land.

Most people, however, don’t need more council regulations to care for their trees. In fact, as you can see when driving around the city, it is often the trees in the city’s parks and boulevards that seem to be the most neglected.

In Vancouver, we are overwhelmed by the number of trees that line every road and the efforts to maintain them. But in our prairie town, it seems as if we are more eager to cut down trees than to care for them and adapt to living around them.

Calgarians and the city itself invest thousands of dollars each year in new trees. Those planted along busy sidewalks or paths have to fight and fend for themselves. Trees on commercial land, along Macleod Trail, for example, appear neglected by companies that could maintain them with a minimum of effort. I asked the city about this and they told me the theory is that after a tree has been planted and minimally cared for for more than three years, it should survive on its own. Looking out my office window, I can see clear evidence of trees that needed more than three years of maintenance. On occasion, I took a hoe and a pruner and tried to improve the appearance and health of trees on city land.

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In a recent Herald article, we learned that there has been a decline in the size of Calgary’s urban forest and that the city wants to be stricter in enforcing rules on tree removal on private property. Of course, that only seems to apply in places where the council hasn’t decided to remove an old bungalow and replace it with high-density housing that extends almost to the property line. In many of those areas where two fills have been developed on a 50-foot lot, it has been possible to save all or most of the trees. But in this new concept of density, foreign to the history or value of the community, trees are felled to crowd in as many people as possible. about lots.

The trees are just one more example of the loss that communities are suffering because of this city council and its inability or unwillingness to listen to citizens. How much more evidence does this group need to understand that a majority simply opposes blanket rezoning? Why would an elected council, charged with running the city, choose to be so closed-minded to the will of the people who put them in office?

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The example of trees illustrates how this explosion of density is affecting communities in many ways. Streets that were once lined with trees now have buildings squashed into the sidewalk to increase density. In many cases, front gardens have disappeared or are so small that the grass, if it grows, could be trimmed with scissors.

The public hearing on the general zoning is April 22. Many people are convinced that the majority of the council has already made a decision and this hearing is an exercise in futility.

Hopefully, that’s not true.

George H. Brookman is president and ambassador of West Canadian Digital.

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