Assessing the Benefits and Costs of the Urban Forest

With effective planning and management, urban trees and forests will provide a wide range of important benefits to urbanites. These include a more pleasant, healthful, and comfortable environment to live, work, and play in, savings in the costs of providing a wide range of urban services, and substantial improvements in individual and community well- being. Urban forestry plans should begin with consideration of the contribution that trees and forests can make to people's needs. Planning and management efforts should focus on how the forest can best meet those needs. Past planning and management efforts have not been as effective as they might have been because planners and managers have underesti- mated the potential benefits that urban trees and forests can provide, and have not understood the planning and manage- ment efforts needed to provide those benefits, particularly the linkages between benefits and characteristics of the urban forest and its management. Urban forests are a significant and increasingly valuable component of the urban environment. However, with the limited information on the ben- efits and costs of urban trees and forests currently available to decision makers, management of these valuable assets continues to be inadequate. Urban forest resources are declining in many cities, and the resulting benefits are only a fraction of what they could be. In many instances costs are higher than necessary. We are just beginning to learn about the extent and magnitudes of the many benefits and costs associated with urban trees and forests, as well as the many ties between urban forest resources and the quality of urban life. Research in a number of areas suggests that we have vastly underestimated the many ways that the urban forest touches the lives of urbanites, as well as the deep significance that many people attach to trees. Furthermore, we often lack reliable information on how to most effectively manage urban forests to provide many of these benefits. A sound understanding of the full range of benefits and costs associated with urban forests, as well as how various management practices, programs, and policies influence those benefits and costs, is essential for action to enhance urban forests and the associated well-being of urban- ites. Benefits to consider include the goods and services produced by urban trees and forests that are valuable to people. These benefits vary over space and time according to changes in the urban environment, its inhabitants, and their needs. Some benefits are easily expressed in dollars or other numbers, while others are difficult to quantify using such measures; but in the aggregate they are highly significant to urbanites.