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Tree Symposium |
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| Healthy Trees for a Beautiful City Proceedings |
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Investing in the Urban Forest
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Staff training symposium
The City Planning, Parks, Forestry and Recreation, Toronto Water and Technical Services Divisions sponsored a staff training session with internationally recognized speakers to share their experiences, challenges and success stories on creating liveable, beautiful city streets with a focus on the role of the tree. The event was attended by over 180 staff and has led to new approaches to planting street trees.
The approach was to invite in a group of respected experts to discuss the importance of investing in trees, not just to improve the environment, but also for the benefits to the economy and the city's social well being. The intent was to provide convincing interdisciplinary arguments about why trees should be viewed as an asset, part of the City's infrastructure, as are roads and utilities. In many ways, trees are more significant than typical city infrastructure in that they last longer, and become more valuable with age.
Currently there are no regulations in place to ensure adequate space, soil and water for the growth of healthy trees, nor to encourage the use of permeable surfaces. Existing planting and growing practices are either inconsistent or insufficient to provide for proper growing spaces which are limited by pavement, access to water and quality soil, and our cold winters and use of salt.
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