Why are there trees in the city?
Before I started my research project on tree squares last year, I didn't give much thought to the presence of trees in the urban environment. Probably like most people, I took them for granted. I think I ascribed to them both a natural role ("they grow here") while also accepting that they had assigned places in designated areas.
But as I learned about street trees as a phenomenon, and a modern one at that, I started to see them in a new light. For all the praise of their "ecosystem services" in the form of shade, cooling and carbon sequestration, I wondered if they actually served a purpose that was more symbolic than practical. It seemed notable they appeared in cities like Paris and London at the same time that industrialisation and private land takeovers forced a mass exodus of people from the countryside. Could it be we needed them to keep us company in our urban isolation? Were they the first political prisoners of capitalism? Some combination of the two?
I wondered what would happen if we viewed street trees as active agents, rather than passive instruments. What if we made common cause with them about issues of shared concern? How could we potentially help each other create a different reality than the one we are both boxed into now?
To explore these questions further, I will be hosting a workshop at Trust, a truly wonderful community I am part of, next week in Berlin. Please read on for further details, and let me know if you'd like to come!
THINKING WITH STREET TREES
Saturday 19 October - 2 pm. - Trust - Kluckstraße 25
In this workshop, we will go on an experiential and imaginative journey with street trees, with a special focus on interrupting the narrative of urban loneliness and learned helplessness. Street trees are forced residents of the city, prisoners of tiny concrete squares that go unnamed and unnoticed. As living beings that have been turned into infrastructure, they challenge us to examine the ways our own lives are instrumentalised by an extractive system. At the same time, they represent a patchwork terrain of possibility for resistance and sense-making, which we can claim through insistence on relationship and interventions of care.
The workshop will include hands-on creative exercises (drawing, journaling, mapping) as well as a street tree walk in Schöneberg.
Suggested donation: €15, €10 for Trust members
To register, please email dear.nature@pm.me
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