Urban Policy and Research

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Re-inventing the Urban Forest: The Rise of

Arboriculture in Australia

Aidan Davison & Jamie Kirkpatrick

To cite this article: Aidan Davison & Jamie Kirkpatrick (2014) Re-inventing the Urban Forest:
The Rise of Arboriculture in Australia, Urban Policy and Research, 32:2, 145-162, DOI:
10.1080/08111146.2013.832669

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Urban Policy and Research, 2014
Vol. 32, No. 2, 145–162, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08111146.2013.832669

Re-inventing the Urban Forest: The Rise of

Arboriculture in Australia
AIDAN DAVISON & JAMIE KIRKPATRICK
School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

(Received 18 February 2013; accepted 17 July 2013)

ABSTRACT Reform for urban sustainability has commonly focused on either technological
efficiency or ecosystem health. Elements of cities that do not fit neatly into either of these concerns,
such as trees in urban environments, have often been disregarded. We use thematic analysis of semi-
structured interviews with eastern Australian urban tree professionals to document the rise of
arboriculture over the last 30 years and the implications of this rise for urban sustainability. The
framing of urban trees has shifted from adornment or obstruction to a key asset in the delivery of
ecological, economic and social services. This transition has been interwoven with the rise of the
profession of arboriculture from the ash bed of tree lopping and naive nativism. Arborists are
working to improve the sustainability of Australian cities by integrating the management of grey
(built) and green (living) infrastructure in a context in which space for trees is in a severe decline.
They are pioneering a way of managing urban ecosocial systems that unsettles dichotomies of nature
and culture, a way relevant to other urban professions.

城市可持续性改革通常侧重技术效率或生态环境的健康。但城市的元素不一定都能纳入这两
个方面，有些因素，如城市里的树木，常常被忽视。我们对澳大利亚东部树木专业人员进行了
半结构化访谈，通过对这些访谈的主题分析，记录了近30 年来树艺的兴起，及其对城市可持续
性的意义。城市树形修剪已从原来的装饰或区隔发展为生态、经济和社会服务的重要部门。
从修枝到移植的树艺行业应运而兴。树艺家在树木空间急剧减少的环境里，将灰色（建筑）基
础设施和绿色（活生生的）基础设施的管理融为一体，改善了澳大利亚城市的可持续性。他们
打破了自然与文化的二元对立，开创了管理城市生态社会系统的新途径，为城市的其他职业提
供了启发。
KEY WORDS: Arboriculture, green infrastructure, local government, qualitative research,
sustainability, urban trees

Introduction
Most urban disciplines and professions rest upon a long-standing spatial distinction
between built environments and natural environments, that itself sits atop a deeper
distinction between technology and ecology (Williams, 1973). Recently, it has become

Correspondence Address: Aidan Davison, School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of
Tasmania, Private Bag 78, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia. Fax: þ 61 3 6226 2989; Tel: þ 61 3 6226 7590;
Email: Aidan.Davison@utas.edu.au

q 2013 Editorial Board, Urban Policy and Research

146 A. Davison & J. Kirkpatrick

common to recast this distinction through a more spatially complex contrast between grey
(built) and green (living) infrastructure (Benedict & McMahon, 2007; Wright, 2011;
Young, 2011; Young & McPherson, 2013). Advocacy for green infrastructure has been led
by ecologists and environmentalists who define it as “an interconnected network of natural
areas and other open spaces that conserves natural ecosystem values and functions,
sustains clean air and water, and provides a wide array of benefits to people and wildlife”
(Benedict & McMahon, 2006, p. 1). An extension of earlier environmentalist ideas about
nature as a social life-support system, this approach presents built form as embedded
within wider systems of green infrastructure on which their sustainability depends.
Much discourse on urban sustainability in Australia has also reflected a philosophically
dualistic distinction between built and natural form. Those focused on built form have
been predominantly concerned with optimising resource use efficiency through
technological design, most notably by creating the compact city (Newman et al., 2009;
for debate see Dodson, 2010). Those focused on natural systems have predominantly
attempted to optimise urban ecosystem services and native biological diversity (Yencken
& Wilkinson, 2000; Downton, 2009). The disciplines, professions and agencies that seek
to realise efficient built form have been distinct from those seeking to facilitate a viable
urban ecology. The segregated activities of these professions have been lauded as
complementary (Low et al., 2005; Jim, in press), yet, such separation increases the
potential for conflict. For example, efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing energy
consumption through urban consolidation may lead to a loss of urban vegetation that, in
turn, increases the vulnerability of urban environments to climate change through
enhanced urban heat island effects (Hamin & Gurran, 2009).
While the focus of Australian ecologists and environmental managers working towards
urban sustainability is primarily on green infrastructure and the focus of many urban planning
and urban design professionals working toward this goal is primarily on grey infrastructure
(Davison, 2006), not all efforts to improve the sustainability of Australian cities neatly
dichotomise. Indeed, the aim of this article is to describe an ongoing transformation in the
management of trees in built environments that resists this division. Linked to the rise of the
profession of arboriculture, this transformation provides an instructive—and, to date, largely
undocumented—example of an approach to urban sustainability that integrates concerns
about green and grey infrastructure. This practical example is relevant to burgeoning
theoretical discussion about the need to conceive of cities as ecosocial wholes (Braun, 2005;
Heynen et al., 2006; Pickett et al., 2011) and relevant for urban planners and managers
charged with producing both social and ecological goods (Pincetl, 2012; Young &
McPherson, 2013). In particular, this example is relevant to those involved in ‘greenspace’
planning in Australian cities. Although such planning acknowledges the social and ecological
importance of trees, it continues to be shaped by a dualistic conception of urban space and its
proponents appear largely unaware of the transformation of tree management described here
(Byrne et al., 2010; Queensland Government, 2011).
In this article, we investigate changes in the management of urban trees over the past 30
years in Australia, drawing on interviews with tree managers and related professionals in
six eastern cities. Analysis centres on the maturing of the profession of arboriculture. After
setting the scene for the rise of arboriculture in the 1980s and reviewing the changing
nature of Australia’s urban forest, the discussion moves to a consideration of the role of
arboriculturalists (hereafter, arborists) in the re-invention of urban trees as core
components of urban sustainability.
 Re-inventing the Urban Forest 147

Methods
We approach our subject using the investigative techniques of qualitative human geography in
the context of theoretical discussions related to contested concepts of urban nature (Davison,
2008). Forty-four semi-structured interviews of 50–70 minutes duration were conducted by
the first-named author according to an informed consent protocol approved by the Tasmania
Social Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee (H0010927). The majority of interviews
were conducted with one participant, four involved two participants and one each involved
three and four participants, for a total of 53 participants, of whom two-thirds (35) were male.
Table 1 records the number and characteristics of interviewees in Melbourne, Brisbane
(including the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast), Townsville, Sydney (including
Newcastle), Adelaide and Hobart. In most cities, participants were sought from a range of
inner, middle and outer urban areas. Two-thirds of the sample (35) was comprised of
professional arborists of whom 24 were employed by a total of 14 municipal governments, 10
had their own private practice and one was employed by a state statutory organisation. The
remaining third of the sample was composed of five municipal landscape architects and
environmental planners, five members of state government agencies with responsibility for
native vegetation, two landscape architects in private practice, plus six participants from non-
profit, academic and statutory organisations with a role in tree management.
Questioning focused on the perceptions of the participants of their roles in urban tree
management, allowing them ample opportunity to shape the direction of the discussion.
The order and framing of questions differed between interviews, although the same broad
issues were covered in all. Interviews were transcribed and analysed thematically using
NVivo 9.2 software, beginning with a synthesis of open coding and semi-structured coding
derived from the focus of questioning. This article reports on only one, of several,
overarching (or first-generation) themes present in the data, that of the historical

Table 1. The interview sample by city

Number of Date of
City interviews Description of participants interviews
Adelaide 6 2 local government arborists; 1 private October 2011
arborist, 1 private landscape architect, 1 local
government architect; 1 non-government
organisation (horticulture)
Brisbane 17 7 local government arborists; 5 private July 2011
arborists, 4 local government planners; 1 local
government landcare
Hobart 3 1 local government arborist; 1 private arborist; October 2011
1 state government arborist
Melbourne 13 5 local government arborists; 2 private November 2009
arborists, 4 state government; 1 landscape
architect; 1 arboricultural education
Sydney 9 4 local government arborists; 2 private July 2011
arborists, 3 state government (2 legal, 1
environmental management), 1 local govern-
ment architect; 1 non-government organisation
Townsville 5 2 local government arborists; 1 local govern- July 2011
ment representative, 1 private arborist, 1
non-government organisation (landcare)
148 A. Davison & J. Kirkpatrick

development of the profession of arboriculture. In particular, this article does not address
the important theme of risk, which is the subject of another article. The discussion is
organised by specific (or second-generation) subthemes used as subheadings. Analysis is
based on recognition that interviewees are situated within this history as key actors. Along
with the use of secondary sources (often identified by, and in some cases written by,
participants), the size and diversity of the sample help triangulate claims and to identify
geographical, temporal and professional contexts. However, participant perspectives are
not presented as an objective record; they offer highly informed and highly particular
accounts based on personal experience. Attribution is anonymous, with contextual
information indicated as follows: location (H ¼ Hobart, A ¼ Adelaide, S ¼ Sydney,
M ¼ Melbourne, T ¼ Townsville, B ¼ Brisbane), followed by a number indicating the
sequential order of interviews; employment (LG ¼ local government, SG ¼ state
government, Pr ¼ private practice, NGO ¼ non-government organisation); and pro-
fession (Arb ¼ arboriculturalist, LA ¼ landscape architect, Oth ¼ other).

Results and Discussion

We report our findings under three thematic headings. The first, “History of Arboriculture”,
outlines international antecedents and main drivers leading up to the emergence of Australian
arboriculture in the 1980s. The second, “Arboriculture Matures”, details the maturing of the
profession of arboriculture over the past two decades in response to the growing challenges
faced by tree managers in Australian cities. The third, “Arborists Re-invent Trees”, identifies
three distinct but interrelated ways in which arborists are pioneering new ways of representing
and relating to urban trees. This ongoing re-invention of trees as infrastructure, assets and
money has aided the development of the profession of arboriculture and is significantly
altering the strategic and practical management of Australia’s urban forest.

History of Arboriculture
Talk of the urban forest in Australia is recent and tentative, with a few interviewees
expressing reservations about the use of the term. In contrast, this concept has been central
in guiding urban tree management in North America, where it was first mentioned in 1894
(Konijnendijk et al., 2006) and enshrined as a core programme of the United States (US)
Forest Service in 1972. Cities account for almost one-quarter of tree canopy cover in the
USA (Dwyer et al., 2000). While not employing the concept of the urban forest until the
20th century, many European societies have a longer tradition of urban forestry, although
this was focused on discrete areas of forest within or near cities, or at some distance but
owned as a public city resource, rather than on the full range of urban vegetation covering
all forms of land tenure, as has been the case in North America (Konijnendijk et al., 2006).

The Australian context. In Australia, the North American definition of the urban forest as
comprising “all of the trees and other vegetation—including the soil, air and water that
supports it” is beginning to be adopted at the municipal level (City of Melbourne, 2012,
p. 9). This integrated focus on managing trees in streets and private gardens as well as in
parks and public open space poses a challenge to the current division of labour between the
managers of grey and green infrastructure. Recognising this challenge, the City of
Melbourne (2012) describes the practice of urban forestry as:
 Re-inventing the Urban Forest 149

the meeting of arboricultural and forestry practices with other disciplines such as
urban planning, landscape architecture, architecture, engineering and economics.
Ensuring these groups work collaboratively will be integral to creating a genuinely
Australian concept of urban forestry. (p. 10).

As in the USA, the burden of managing the urban forest in Australia lies predominantly
with local government (Ely, 2010). Australian cities typically encompass a large number
of municipal governments. For this reason, many of our interviewees suggested that
collaborative urban forest management will need to be inter-governmental as well as inter-
disciplinary.
Current thinking about the urban forest in Australia is indebted to urban planning and
particularly to the City Beautiful and Garden City movements of the late 19th and early
20th century (Wright, 2011; Young, 2011). While for much of the 20th century urban
planners and designers valued urban vegetation primarily as a source of amenity and
beauty, the participants in these earlier movements understood urban nature as offering a
complex synthesis of aesthetic and functional values. In recovering this earlier concern
with the functionality of green space, many recent promoters of the urban forest have
provided instrumental reasons for valuing urban trees (Young & McPherson, 2013).
When invited to articulate the benefits provided by trees, interviewees also strongly
emphasised the functional virtues of urban trees, with a large majority mentioning their
importance for climate moderation (shade and evapotranspiration, in particular), a third
mentioning their important role in water management and a small proportion mentioning
their role in biodiversity conservation. However, the majority of interviewees also
affirmed the aesthetic and other less quantifiable benefits of urban trees. Indeed, a number,
such as this Brisbane arborist, echoed the early 20th century in moving seamlessly
between the quantitative and qualitative benefits conferred by urban trees:

Shade and cooling. So that’s huge for a subtropical city . . . Associated with that
there’s clearly some health benefits in having a more walkable, outdoor lifestyle,
outdoor recreation orientated community. And then there is . . . the value of
attractiveness per se, it’s strong but I think it seems to be a little bit more about a
sense of place and a sense of time. That’s what people tell us that they can relate to in
terms of the trees in their community. (B14 LG Arb)

Transforming urban tree management. In the 1980s, the commercial and municipal
workforce responsible for tree planting, maintenance and removal in Australian cities
typically had general training in horticulture or no formal training at all. Management of
remnant native vegetation was limited, but was soon to become the province of natural
resource managers, ecologists and community-based ecological restoration (landcare)
groups. Closely related to the professions of silviculture and horticulture, and regarded by
many as a sub-discipline of the latter, the profession of arboriculture, which specialises in
the cultivation and care of woody vegetation in settlements, was little known. The majority
of its few Australian representatives were trained overseas, particularly in the UK and the
USA.
Today, arboriculture plays an important role in the management of trees in streets,
parks, commercial properties and private gardens across much of urban Australia. The
150 A. Davison & J. Kirkpatrick

following discussion describes the emergence of this group of urban environmental

managers as a response to, and a cause of, changes in Australia’s urban forest (for a
timeline, see Table 2), and considers their significance in ongoing efforts to improve the
sustainability of Australian cities. Participants identified two drivers in the decades leading
up to the emergence of Australian arboriculture in the 1980s.

Driver 1: American influences. The modern scientific profession of arboriculture has its
origins in the 1960s and 1970s. Notwithstanding terminological debate (Konijnendijk
et al., 2006), modern arboriculture is understood here as representing a significant break
from prior focus on both non-urban forests associated with cities and individual trees in
urban environments (e.g. amenity trees, shade trees, etc.). Taking hold first in the USA

Table 2. Timeline of development of eastern Australian arboriculture

Early beginnings Premodern European traditions of ‘town forestry’
1894 Modern urban forest concept first mooted
1900– 1930s City Beautiful and Garden City movements
1960s Emergence of modern scientific arboriculture in
North America
1970s Early drivers of Australian arboriculture
Early 1970s Green Bans in Australian cities, rise
of urban environmentalism
1970s Books of Alex Shigo influence Australian tree managers
1972– US Forest Service Urban Forest Program
1975– 83 John French argues for urban production forestry in Australia
1976 International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) founded
Late 1970s Victorian-based Arboricultural Association of Australia (AAA) founded
1970s– 1980s Widespread planting of native trees in streets and gardens
1980s Arboriculture emerges, tensions arise
1982 Debates on lopping and tree spikes in AAA
1982 Tree Surgeon Guild of Australia (TSGA) founded in split from AAA
1985 Burnley College establishes tertiary arboriculture course
1989 TSGA becomes NSW-based National Arborists Association of Australia
(NAAA)
1990s Arboriculture matures in the face of urban consolidation
1992 Queensland Arboriculture Association (QAA) founded
1997 International Society of Arboriculture Australian Chapter (ISAAC) founded
1997 South Australian Society of Arboriculture (SASA) founded
2000s Arborists re-invent trees as infrastructure and assets
2003 NSW Local Government Association introduces Urban Forest Policy
2003 Institute of Australian Consulting Arboriculturalists (IACA) founded
2009 National framework for local government asset management
2010s Arborists re-invent trees as money
2010 North Sydney Council uses i-Tree to value its urban forest
2010 ISAAC changes name to Arboriculture Australia (AA) and merges with NAAA
2011-on-going ISA revokes chapter status of ISAAC, AA initiates on-going dispute to retain
status.
2012 City of Melbourne urban forest strategy forefronts the integrative role of trees.
2012 AA’s application for ISA Associate Organisation status rejected
2013 QAA is recognised as ISA Associate Organisation (only current affiliate in
Australia)
2013 Tasmanian Association of Arboriculture currently under development
Note: Interview themes indicated in bold text with indicative not definitive chronology.
 Re-inventing the Urban Forest 151

and, to a lesser extent, Canada (Johnston, 1996), before maturing in the UK in the 1980s
(Johnston, 1997), modern arboriculture was linked to a new conceptualisation of urban
forestry and to advances in plant and soil science (Ely, 2010). The defining mission of this
new profession was the scientific management of trees and tree populations as an integral
component of the urban system. In addition to the decision of Congress to establish an
urban forestry programme within the Federal Forest Service, key developments in the
USA during the 1970s included the establishment of a large number of university
programmes in arboriculture (Andresen, 1978), metamorphosis of a domestic association
into the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) in 1976, following the launch of the
associated Journal of Arboriculture in 1975, and the books of the Forest Service plant
physiologist Alex Shigo. These developments were driven by growing popular awareness
of the functional as well as the aesthetic benefits of urban trees.
North American influence in Australian arboriculture was evident in the interviews,
with Shigo’s work referred to by several, including this local government arborist who
trained in Sydney in the 1980s:

Shigo’s work was coming out and up until that point everybody was cutting trees
flush to the trunk . . . [Shigo] shifted the way we thought of the tree and now the tree
suddenly became something that wasn’t reliant on us but that was quite capable of
managing its own affairs if we treated it in a certain way. (S8 LG Arb)

Also influenced by developments in North America, CSIRO forester John French was
the first to propose the development of urban forestry in Australia. His vision of urban
areas of productive forest was grounded in traditional forestry practices, chiefly timber
harvesting (French, 1975, 1983). French anticipated compact city arguments in envisaging
dense housing clusters embedded within public forest. However, he also had these
suggestions for existing urban form:

Fast growing native species could be planted and cultivated for timber along nature
strips, highways, freeways (approximately 8– 16 ha per road km may be obtained),
and adjacent to tram and train ways and on recreation areas such as parks and golf
courses. (French, 1975, pp. 179 – 180)

French’s (1983) proposal, re-iterated in the first volume of this journal, went unheeded by
planners until the recent re-emergence of interest in the urban forest (giving rise to this,
only the second article on the topic in this journal). However, his message was not
neglected by all. One interviewee recalls being introduced by French to the concept of the
urban forest at a seminar in the mid-1980s. French’s message, that management of
individual trees must be integrated with a concern for “the benefit of all the trees together
as a collective” (S9 LG Arb), was a catalytic moment in the career of this municipal
arborist. Amongst other achievements in urban forest advocacy, this arborist was later an
instrumental figure in Australia’s first significant policy commitment to urban forestry, the
NSW Local Government Association’s 2003 Urban Forest Policy.

Driver 2: The influence of environmentalism. The second driver behind the rise of
modern arboriculture in Australia was the combined impact of the suburban boom and
environmental movements between the 1950s and 1970s. Rapid urban expansion during
152 A. Davison & J. Kirkpatrick

this period saw the loss of large numbers of trees at the urban edge (French, 1975, 1983), as
native woodland and rural land was consumed by the brick and tile frontier, and the loss of
considerable numbers of trees within urban areas to accommodate a rapidly growing road
network (Davison, 2004). Despite Boyd’s (1960) well-known characterisation of post-war
suburban pioneers as vehement arboriphobes, it is just as plausible, given the presence of
mature trees in many post-war suburban gardens, that many suburban Australians
sympathised with David Meredith, the main character of George Johnson’s celebrated
1964 novel, My Brother Jack, who was appalled by the treeless vista of his new estate, and
joined him in planting a large tree amidst a sea of lawn (Kirkpatrick et al., 2013).
Evidence of growing concern about the loss of urban trees can be found in the
introduction of British-style tree preservation orders by some local governments in Sydney
during the 1970s. These local orders placed restrictions on the removal of specified trees
on both public and private land, and were adopted as environmental planning instruments
in the 1979 NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act. While these orders were
not without controversy during the 1980s (e.g. Glascott, 1983), they reflected growing
appreciation of the significance of mature trees in the urban landscape. At this time,
however, this significance was predominantly framed in terms of amenity rather than
environmental function.
The role of environmentalist values in reshaping perceptions of urban landscapes in
Australia during the 1970s and 1980s was also important in transforming the urban forest.
In cities, these values were commonly expressed through an attachment to native flora and
fauna. The Green Bans of the early 1970s significantly raised public awareness about the
loss of native bushland (Burgmann & Burgmann, 1988). However, as many interviewees
pointed out, the new interest in urban nature went well beyond saving pockets of remnant
vegetation, and was expressed in the new popularity of native or ‘bush’ gardening,
especially in the planting of large native trees (Timms, 2006). It was evident also in the
widespread, if largely unplanned, planting of large native trees in streets and parks by local
governments during the 1970s and 1980s (e.g. North Sydney Council, 2006), a
phenomenon that one interviewee characterised as the creation of “the urban mallee
landscape” (A5 LG Arb). This phenomenon had its counterpart in rural landscapes during
this time in the emergence of the rural landcare movement that was predominantly focused
on planting native trees. By 1989, native trees had been so venerated in the national
consciousness that Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s declaration that his government would
plant 1 billion trees to combat land degradation was met with wide support. Over the next
decade, the landcare movement was to rapidly take hold throughout Australian cities, with
local community groups taking the lead in protecting and rehabilitating urban bushland
(Davison & Ridder, 2006).

Early tensions. While there was considerable interest in planting and retaining urban trees
during the 1970s and 1980s, the planning of tree planting and management of trees was
very different from today. Urban tree management was not thought to require specialist
skills (Moore, 1993). During the 1980s, tensions began to emerge between those using
established practices and those influenced by, and in some cases trained in, modern
arboriculture in North America, Europe and elsewhere. An example of this tension
occurred during a meeting of the Victorian-based Arboricultural Association of Australia
in 1982. “Heated argument over the issue of lopping trees and using tree spikes when
pruning trees” (NAAA/ISAAC, 2010, p. 4) saw this meeting disrupted and four members
 Re-inventing the Urban Forest 153

highly critical of these long-standing practices resign to form the Tree Surgeon Guild of
Australia. This latter organisation was expressly associated with modern arboricultural
practices and was renamed in 1989 the National Arborists Association of Australia
(NAAA), with a membership predominantly in New South Wales. Demonstrating the
persistence of ongoing tensions within the profession, an Australian Chapter of the ISA
(ISAAC) was created independently of the NAAA in 1997, with these two bodies only
merging to create a single national professional body, Arboriculture Australia, in 2010
(NAAA/ISAAC, 2010). The ISA subsequently withdrew the chapter status of ISAAC and
has, to date, refused the requests of Arboriculture Australia for re-instatement (see
Table 2). Partly as a result of these tensions and partly as a result of the significance of state-
based contexts and loyalties, Australia is “unique in the world of arboriculture” in having
11 associations, where most countries “have one or two” (NAAA/ISAAC, 2010, p. 3).

Arborists displacing loppers. Today, the profession of arboriculture defines itself in

opposition to practices such as tree lopping. The growing influence of this profession thus
represents a significant shift in tree management practices in many, but not all, parts of
urban Australia. The profession believes it has played a major role in changing social
attitudes to urban trees, although these changes are geographically uneven and, in the
opinion of most participants, have a long way yet to go. Those interviewed were universal
in their disapproval of tree lopping, which they characterised as the province of “cowboys”
who set up business with “a chainsaw and a ute and . . . no qualification” (B1 Pr Arb), and
who liked “cutting trees down and getting some cash” (H1 Pr Arb). Tree lopping was
associated with unjustified tree removal and topping or arbitrary downsizing of trees, “just
cutting to a . . . particular height on a tree and leaving really large stubs, ugly stabs and
damaging trees in a big way” (B1 Pr Arb). Several participants referred to shoe spikes,
which facilitate relatively easy climbing, yet damage trees. One private arborist, based in
Adelaide, recounted a recent newspaper article about the prosecution of a lopper for
cutting down a protected urban tree:

he’s not an arborist, he’s a lopper. OK? There was a photo of him [the lopper] on the
paper having his chainsaw as if it was this big phallic symbol, after just ripping this
huge river red gum, and his quote was, “Gum trees shouldn’t be in the urban
environment.” (A1 Pr Arb)

The tree lopping industry has now been substantially displaced by the profession of
arboriculture in the two largest cities of the sample, Melbourne and Sydney. Brisbane has
largely followed this transition, although more recently and to a lesser extent. Indeed,
within the South East Queensland conurbation as a whole, this transition has been highly
uneven. On the Gold Coast, “it was pretty much all tree loppers” in the mid-1990s,
although they are now “starting to disappear” (B1 LG Arb), while on the Sunshine Coast a
private arborist quipped, “we are still pruning trees with backhoes here” (B6 Pr Arb).
Lopping remains common in the three smallest cities in the study: Adelaide, Hobart and
Townsville.

Arboricultural education. Reflecting on his beginnings in the profession in the mid-

1980s in Sydney, one arborist recalled that “there wasn’t a lot of serious tree management
or good tree care going on and a lot of the people . . . involved at that stage weren’t
154 A. Davison & J. Kirkpatrick

necessarily well educated” (S8 Pr Arb). The advance of arboriculture has been closely
linked to improvements in education, and to two institutions in particular: Burnley College
in Melbourne (now part of the University of Melbourne), which offered, between 1985
and 2005, the only “dedicated arboriculture tertiary education course” (Moore, 2005) in
the country, and Ryde College of Technical and Further Education, in Sydney.
These institutions were the first to develop stand-alone arboriculture qualifications
and were held in high regard by the large number of interviewees who had been trained
within them.

Arboriculture Matures
The challenge of urban consolidation. While education was vital in improving the
management of urban trees and cultivating awareness of their value, arboriculture has also
been given impetus over the past 30 years by the urban consolidation that has reshaped
Australian cities (Hall, 2010). Intensifying competition for space as a result of urban
consolidation has led to significant tree loss, a fact central to much public resistance to
consolidation (Lewis, 1999), but little remarked upon in scholarly discussion of the
phenomenon (Searle, 2004; McDougall, 2007; for an exception, see Hall, 2010). The
combination of heightened awareness of the value of urban trees and the increased
difficulty of accommodating them was central to the development of arboriculture.
Participants agreed that in many parts of urban Australia there has been a loss of trees on
private land and a gain of trees on public land over the past 30 years, a trend that was
making local government’s role as a tree manager increasingly important to the overall
health and function of the urban forest. Urban consolidation was identified as the most
significant cause of loss of private trees, although factors such as changing social
perception and management of risk, increased competition for space due to new
underground services, architectural focus on landscape views and rooftop solar energy
systems were also mentioned. As this participant explains, many tree managers in local
government are aware of the continued potential for the loss of private trees and feel a
responsibility to compensate for it:

I recognised very quickly –after reading all the planning documents from our State
Government about the need for in-fill development and to stop developing on the
fringe and the anticipated increase in population and densities – that we were going
to lose a very substantial part, over the next 25– 50 years, of the private urban
canopy. And the outcome for that would be horrendous if we didn’t think about it
advance and start planning for that outcome . . . . I spoke to some planners and they
said, “well it [the urban forest] is probably just disappearing isn’t it, it is just going to
go”. I said, well, “maybe we’d better put all our eggs into the public domain . . . ” (S9
LG Arb)

Combined with concern about the loss of existing trees, increased appreciation of the value
of urban trees has created considerable impetus in local government for strategic
approaches to urban forest management. As a result “councils have put an awful amount of
money over the last 15 years into planting master plans, tree surveys” and other tree
planning activities (M9 Pr Arb), in the process helping to create the arboricultural
 Re-inventing the Urban Forest 155

consulting industry and its associated accrediting body, the Institute of Australian
Consulting Arboriculturalists.
Some participants expressed concern, however, that in responding to tree loss, emphasis
is often placed by councils on the relatively simple and easily quantified task of planting
new trees at the expense of the more complex, resource-intensive and long-term task of
ensuring that street, park and garden environments are conducive to the long-term health
of trees. Voicing concern about the overall loss of “viable root zones in urban
environments”, this private arborist from Brisbane was scathing about much street tree
planting by local governments and their contractors:

They dig the same bloody 600 mm diameter hole, they plonk the same fucking 45
litre plant into it that’s got a crap root system. They make no provision for drainage.
The civil engineers won’t allow the bottom of those pits to be connected to the side
drains underneath the curb and channel, or allow those pits to be bottom drained into
the storm water system. They don’t allow sufficient growing media for those trees to
mature, and if you go back to those guys and put them on the spot and say what’s the
replenishment time, what’s the cycle, how long do these things last . . . [the] answer
is 17 years . . . [S]treet trees aren’t designed to last. Street trees are an inconvenience
that an engineer designs to fail because politicians and residents demand these
bloody trees in their civil works corridor. (B4 Pr Arb)

Another problem identified by some was that there is a limit to the extent that public land
can compensate for the loss of private trees, given that the majority of urban trees in
Australian cities are likely to reside on private land (Pearce et al., 2013). For example,
Brisbane City Council has a canopy replacement policy that requires as part of
development approval that developers provide funding for the planting of trees to replace
any that are approved for removal. One participant explained that while most of these
replacement trees have been planted in public parks, “we’re running out of places to plant
trees in parks” (B8 LG Arb).
The “definite trend towards smaller trees” (see Pearce et al., 2013, for empirical data)
was concerning to many participants because “larger trees give most of the benefits” (A2
Pr LA). Most agreed that “in terms of environmental benefits, the bigger the tree, the
bigger the benefits, and longer term benefits” (M9 Pr Arb). A Hobart arborist described a
“real shift away from trees that are higher than ten meters, to plant smaller trees, flowering
trees rather than large trees that are able to provide landscape for local flora and fauna. It’s
a sad, sad trend” (H3 SG Arb). A Melbourne arborist reported that when residents are
given a choice of street tree species in front of their properties “a lot of then will pick the
smaller-medium sized trees because they don’t want massive sized trees. People don’t
want the large canopy trees out the front, so we have to compensate by planting them in
parks” (M3 LG Arb).

Street tree selection becomes sophisticated. Most participants agreed that, linked to the
trend towards smaller trees, there has been a notable shift in tree species selection in the
public tree estate, with few venturing an opinion on the more complex topic of whether
there have been any discernible trends in private tree selection. It is difficult to characterise
the shift in public tree species with clarity although it is evident that species selection has
become more strategic based on scientific arboricultural knowledge about tree-related
156 A. Davison & J. Kirkpatrick

risks, benefits and requirements. Many tree managers reported that their tree selection
strategically favoured native, and especially locally native, species wherever possible,
chiefly to meet goals of biodiversity and water conservation. However, within this focus
on native species there has been a shift in many parts of urban Australia from the large dry
forest species that predominated much planting in the 1970s and 1980s towards smaller
rainforest species.
While concern about drought tolerance was notable in Adelaide and Melbourne,
participants in both cities indicated recent awareness of the value of trees with high rates of
evapotranspiration in mitigating urban heat island effects as well as the potential problems
created by dry forest trees that damage built infrastructure by desiccating urban soils. The
“mistakes” of earlier decades in relation to native trees has contributed to “a stigma against
native trees in certain areas” (A2 Pr LA). It also seems that the distinction between native
and exotic trees that defined much urban tree planting during the 1970s and 1980s has
become much less sharp for many tree managers. Consider, for example, the perspective
of this inner-city arborist:

There’s always been an easy debate that can arise in some areas of the community,
which is this native versus exotic. To me it’s a bit of a pointless way of thinking
about trees . . . When I think about the majority of the planting locations that we deal
with, it’s very much a dense urban setting, so we’re looking at trees that are going to
cope within a very alien environment, if you like. . . . [W]hat I’m aiming at is to get
as much diversity within the tree population, irrespective of whether the tree comes
from northern New South Wales or whether it comes from Turkey or it comes from
Africa or the [United] States. To me, it’s about having trees that are going to be
successful within the environment. (M7 LG Arb)

Towards “tree sensitive urban design”. Increased competition for urban space is
requiring arborists to develop sophisticated strategies for ensuring viable space, above and
below ground, for trees. The need to design for soil volumes for mature trees was
described by several participants as a challenge that has yet to be taken seriously by urban
planners and designers. The failure to do this is a major contributing factor in the declining
size of trees in the urban forest in Australian cities (S5 Pr Arb). Several participants
indicated the need for arborists to be included early within the design process to ensure
“tree sensitive urban design” (Ely, 2010). If this is done, many, if not all, participants
consider that “there is no reason you can’t have urban consolidation and incorporate tree
cover into that and vegetation cover. . . . It requires some good planning and some good
design work by your architects, by your urban designers and planners” (S8 Pr Arb).

Collaborating with engineers. Many of those interviewed indicated that urban

consolidation and other pressures on urban space are providing impetus for design-
based approaches to tree management that draw upon international innovation in
arboricultural technology. In particular, these approaches build upon the new
opportunities for collaboration between arboriculture and engineering. Thus,
competition for space is “starting to lead to environmental engineering” (B7 LG Arb)
approaches by arborists, especially in relation to underground space. Such competition
 Re-inventing the Urban Forest 157

has driven some of this other innovation in . . . providing engineered, very clever
spaces underneath pavements . . . So rather than give in and try and fit trees into [a]
pissy little space and give trees a bad name by them not performing, . . . [this] has
driven some of this very clever engineering for dedicated . . . root growth under
these pavements in engineered profiles that you can stick stormwater into, and all
that sort of thing. (B14 LG Arb)

Examples of such environmental engineering includes ‘floating’ pavements suspended

above the sub-soil, large vaults or trenches for tree roots that contain suitable soil and
directed harvesting of storm water, all of which can limit tree root impacts on
infrastructure. A focus on tree-sensitive design has begun to transform the often
antagonistic relationship between engineers and arborists into something more
collaborative. One senior municipal arborist reported that his civil engineering colleagues
now enthusiastically take up the arboreal design challenge:

So we had them realign curves, pull nature strips wider, reduce road space where
possible to give us more room for the tree roots. They design tree pits now that have
got structural cells in them, rooting areas, water sensitive design. And because they
start winning awards they come on board very quickly. (S1 LG Arb)

While still in their “infancy” (S1 LG Arb), these engineering approaches were being
taken up in all cities studied. However, as this Hobart arborist explains, these approaches
have resource implications and tend to be restricted to wealthier councils or to councils
with an already strong commitment to urban forest goals:

Very recently . . . growing systems have become available: for example, structural
cells to support hard structures [above] while still having an uncompacted and good
growing root space below. So some of these new systems are great and being utilised
more in fairly high density urban spaces and by councils that have the money to
implement them . . . [My Council] is doing some great work using those systems,
which is really good. Some of the less affluent councils are still stuck with the fairly
traditional method of planting a tree in whatever soil there is and they often tend to
limit themselves to smaller growing species, one, to limit the impact on
infrastructure and two, to limit the risk. (H3 SG Arb)

While hopeful that tree-sensitive design is starting to be taken seriously within the urban
planning and design process, many participants observed that “roads and all that hard-
edged infrastructure” (A4 LG Arb) continue to dominate many municipal budgets.

Arborists Re-invent Trees

Trees as infrastructure. In this context, the growing emphasis on engineering approaches
to sustaining the urban forest can also be seen as a strategy for integrating tree
management as part of the substantial resources allocated to built infrastructure. Many of
those interviewed, including this municipal arborist in peri-urban Adelaide, referred to
trees as infrastructure:
158 A. Davison & J. Kirkpatrick

you let this sprawl take over without planning for that, the important infrastructure,
green infrastructure, it’s too late. You’ve got to get that in at a high level. You’ve got
to understand the importance of it and cost it in all your projects. . . . So it’s getting
engineers and budgeters and policy makers and project managers to understand that
you have to provide the right engineering infrastructure to plant a tree. You can’t just
put it in a gravel pit anymore and expect it to do any good. Where you have
highly compromised urban situations like that you have to factor in a cost of
providing space for the tree roots. They are getting there; there are ways of doing it.
(A4 LG Arb)

Although this participant used the term green infrastructure, they went on to clarify that
they are not convinced that it is helpful to describe the urban forest as green infrastructure:

we’ve got to get away from calling it green infrastructure, call it infrastructure—take
the green out of it and actually call it infrastructure. But then people out there don’t
understand what’s the difference between green and grey. The green infrastructure
stuff is not priced into projects. It’s a tack on afterwards and it represents 1%,
2%, 3%, 5% of the overall civil project cost. We could do a lot better than that.
(A4 LG Arb)

This reticence to adopt the ecological concept of green infrastructure, and the underlying
distinction between urban space and green space often associated with it, was evident in
the sample as a whole, with only two other participants using this concept, although many
others referred to trees as infrastructure more generally. Rather, the emphasis on trees as
infrastructure in many interviews was linked to an interest in urban design in which built
infrastructure and living infrastructure are designed together as part of a seamless system
to support their mutually beneficial interaction. As a result, most participants placed more
emphasis on urban trees as assets fully comparable with built assets than as elements of
nature or ecosystems.

Trees as assets. The last decade has seen ongoing concern about the financial viability of
many local councils in Australia, especially after the global financial crisis in 2008. This
concern has driven strategic asset management planning in local government so as to
ensure long-term provision of community infrastructure. These reforms were advanced
significantly in 2009 by three notable events: the national council of Local Government
and Planning Ministers initiated a process for developing a nationally consistent
framework for local asset management; the Federal Government launched the Local
Government Reform Fund with the aim of improving the financial and asset management
of councils; and the NSW Local Government Act was amended to legislate for long-term
strategic asset management.
In this context, many municipal tree managers reported that trees were, or were on the
way to, being managed as assets in a way comparable to built assets. An arborist at one
Melbourne council that took an early lead on applying asset management to trees
described their population-based approach:

So, for our street trees, our fundamental level of service is that we want a tree in 90%
of the street spaces identified where a tree could be. . . . [I]deally we’d have uniform
 Re-inventing the Urban Forest 159

age profile across the population. So, if we’ve got 40000 trees, and we’re
nominally—for asset management planning and modelling—looking at a 40 year
life, and 40 000 trees substantiates our 90% service level, we’ve got to be pulling out
1000 and putting 1000 in each year . . . We can tell you when our park tree
population will collapse if we plant at this rate. We can tell when our street tree
population will collapse if we keep planting at that rate. You start to get that big
picture population level data, but the big revolution is treating trees as assets. Our
previous Director just didn’t want to go down that path at all, and then we’ve had a
new CEO, new Director and we’ve taken strong leadership on that. But that’s the
best thing that’s happened to our tree population for a long time. (M10 LG Arb)

In some cases, an asset management approach has been required of tree managers as a way
of ensuring financial accountability for tree-related expenditure. More commonly,
however, this approach has been proactively adopted by tree managers as a strategy to
ensure that trees are incorporated into the urban planning and development process in local
government. By including trees in asset management systems, councils are required to
prepare asset management plans and to provide resources for this management.
Several municipal managers reported that taking on the role of “asset custodians” for
trees (B2 LG Arb) had helped considerably in building more cooperative relations with
engineers, planners and others involved in the urban development process. Others,
however, reported that their effort to manage trees as assets was meeting with resistance:
“the engineers and the road infrastructure [people] . . . are generally not happy about the
idea of us claiming ownership over trees as assets” (B12 LG Arb). For one municipal
arborist there was therefore a need to “educate not just the public, but also the council, to
see the trees as an asset” (M3 LG Arb).

Trees as money. The focus on asset management was closely linked to two emerging tree
management practices: monitoring and evaluation of urban tree populations and economic
valuation of tree services. Monitoring and evaluation of urban trees has been greatly
advanced by developments in remote sensing and geographical information systems that are
transforming land management more generally. The move towards economic valuation of
urban tree services, while part of the wider neo-liberal shift toward marketisation of
environmental services, has been more directly linked to the profession of arboriculture and
was a prominent concern in the interviews. In the last few years, monetary values have been
ascribed to “environmental services such as asphalt paving life . . . interception of storm
water . . . decrease in need for both heating and cooling”, amongst others (M7 LG Arb). In
large part, this impetus has come from the i-Tree software developed by the US Forest
Service (McPherson et al., 2011). One council in the study had used this software to value its
tree estate as having a replacement value of over 22 million dollars and a net annual return in
benefits of over 3 million dollars (North Sydney Council, 2010). Many other interviewees
were aware of this system and were supportive of its introduction. One hoped to use i-Tree as
a way of “using the benefits of the trees to drive budgetary processes”, citing the experience
in the USA where i-Tree has shown that “for every dollar you spend on a tree, you’ll get a $5
benefit return”, with this data being “used in a number of cities in the USA to significantly
increase their budgets” (M7 LG Arb). A recent Australian adaptation of i-Tree was used in
the development of the City of Melbourne’s (2012) Urban Forest Strategy and the
programme is likely to be taken up rapidly by many councils in urban Australia.
160 A. Davison & J. Kirkpatrick

Implications
As a result of the rise of arboriculture, trees in streets, parks and gardens are no longer
understood by their municipal and commercial managers as simply objects of amenity and
aesthetic adornment. They are being reconceived as vital assets and key infrastructure that
deliver ecological, economic and social services. Many metropolitan local governments in
Australia are developing long-term strategic plans for measuring, valuing, investing in and
managing public tree assets. The new significance of tree management in local
government efforts to promote local sustainability is reflected in growing cooperation
between arborists and engineers in the early development of tree-sensitive urban design
approaches that blur long-standing distinctions between built form and living systems, and
between technological infrastructure and greenspace. This collaboration promises greater
future focus on life-generating or “biogenic” infrastructure—to adapt a term of Pincetl
(2010). While our participants are unlikely to be familiar with the adjective, it aptly
captures their approach in maximising mutually beneficial interactions between trees and
their technological context as a way of improving the sustainability of urban landscapes.
Despite the growing sophistication of tree management in Australian cities, urban trees
continue to be neglected or marginalised in much policy and planning for urban
sustainability. Even the seemingly convergent activity of greenspace planning is presently
uninformed by the non-dualistic approaches to urban forestry being pioneered by arborists
(e.g. Byrne et al., 2010; Queensland Government, 2011). While matters of ecology have
grown in importance in reform for urban sustainability, they continue to be seen as
primarily relevant to non-urban environments in cities. The chief concern in urban
environments continues to be the technological efficiency of built form, especially in
relation to resource metabolism. The story of arboriculture unsettles this dichotomy. This
emerging profession provides an instructive embodiment of the ecosocial sensibility being
advocated in a growing body of urban theory that is dispensing with dualistic concepts of
city and nature (Braun, 2005; Heynen et al., 2006; Pickett et al., 2011; Pincetl, 2012). The
integration by arborists of green and grey infrastructure in an attempt to simultaneously
achieve both economic and biotic sustainability provides a model for other urban
professions, such as landscape architects, ecologists and engineers, although it remains to
be seen whether the attempt of arborists to arrest the decline of trees in Australia’s cities
will succeed, with further research required to assess the social and ecological outcomes of
the present set of solutions.

Acknowledgements
The authors thank the interviewees, who gave generously of their time and goodwill, and Lil Pearce, Skye Targett
and Tracy Payne for transcription. This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (DP0878249
“Patterns, Causes and Consequences of Tree Retention, Establishment and Removal in Australian Cities”).

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