W.R. Burch, Jr and J.M. Grove
William R. Burch, Jr is Hixon Professor of Natural Resource Management. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Faculty Director. Urban Resources Initiative, Yale University, USA. J. Morgan Grove is Project Coordinator, Baltimore/Urban Resources Initiative, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Yale University, USA.
The Urban Resources Initiative (URI), a cooperative effort between Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Department of Forestry at Michigan State University (MSU), seeks to apply social forestry principles to urban settings in the United States. Projects include cooperative research, planning, problem solving and extension efforts by community residents as well as city, state and federal agencies, private businesses and URI staff. This article focuses on URI efforts to connect urban revitalization with environmental restoration in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. The URI's principal partner has been the Forestry Division of the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks.
Baltimore's resources include 2630 ha of parkland; 300000 trees; 140 km of streams flowing directly into the Chesapeake Bay; 6500 abandoned lots; 276 neighbourhoods and 736000 people. There are also 6880 ha of city-owned watershed properties in surrounding Baltimore County, but the Baltimore region has been subjected to the highest rate of deforestation in the northeastern United States because of metropolitan sprawl.
Community members plant a tree In a vacant lot in central Baltimore
Baltimore has experienced extensive demographic and economic changes over the past 20 years. The city's population has declined from nearly 1.2 million to 735000. The economic base has changed from a major port and manufacturing centre to a service-based economy with large revenues from tourism. Many of the people who have left the city, mostly middle-class people, have moved to the surrounding counties which have experienced some of the highest rates of development in all regions of the United States over the past ten years.
Watering seedlings in a Baltimore park
Poverty in many inner city communities of Baltimore is extreme. In Sandtown-Winchester, for example, one of the URI's community project areas, 22 percent of the 12000 residents are unemployed and 49 percent live below the poverty level. Renters occupy 80 percent of all homes. The neighbourhood has the least reputable high school in the State of Maryland; 60 percent of all high school students do not complete their schooling (see Box, p. 21, The URI in action).
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Urban Resources Initiative: administration, organization and finance The URI programme in Baltimore is a Joint project between the city of Baltimore and Yale University. A memorandum of understanding, signed in - 1989 between Mayor Kurt Schmoke and the Dean of Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, guaranteed that, for five years, two student researchers from the school would work in Baltimore. Since 1989, 21 student researchers have actually worked with the city. Student researchers work troth under the guidance of Yale faculties, the URI faculty director and the URI/Baltimore project coordinator as well as with a wide range of city, state and federal agencies (primarily the city's Department of Recreation and Parks and the Forestry Division), community groups and private businesses. The URI programme is based in the local Parks and People Foundation and is directed by a board of community leaders. Funding comes from a varied of sources. The Department of Recreation and Parks provides some salaries, housing, office space and materials as well as field vehicles. The Parks and People Foundation provides administrative support and solicits contributions from individuals, businesses, other foundations and government agencies. The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies provides financial support for researchers, faculties, administration and project coordination. |
The Baltimore community forestry programme includes nearly 30 community groups and a city-wide community forestry association, with a tree steward (a focal point) from each community. Projects are small-scale activities that address local needs and provide benefits (both short- and long-term) to local residents. For example, in the Greenmount West community, projects are providing saplings for street tree-planting and fresh produce through a community nursery/garden effort. At the same time, these activities are helping to change views of the neighbourhood. People are moving back into the community and the rate of home ownership has increased in areas adjacent to the tree nurseries and garden projects.
In addition to growing trees, the goals of the programme include group formation and collective action, institutional development and the establishment of sustainable social structures and value systems to mobilize and organize individuals. Rather than being tree or product driven, we see a tree or forest as a means for creating and sustaining social bonds or community confidence. For instance, Project RAISE (Raising ambitions instills self-esteem), a partnership project between the URI and Outward Bound (an international outdoor education programme), works with local teenagers to develop job, organizational and leadership skills through community forestry. In addition, the participants develop a sense of self-esteem, accomplishment and pride which is largely missing in their lives. An underlying assumption of the URI approach is that forestry projects can be more effective in meeting existing needs if communities are integrally involved in the planning, decision-making and implementation of forest initiatives.
People's participation in forestry and natural resources programmes is widely favoured, generously pronounced and passionately embraced, particularly at international meetings, conferences and workshops. However, once people leave the conference hall, the actual nature of public participation varies a great deal.
In early participatory approaches, a detailed plan with a number of options was prepared by traditional technicians and decision-makers. The beneficiaries participated by providing formal comments on the plan, but the power to accept or reject comments remained within the control of the professionals.
Many more recent attempts at participatory planning are at an opposite pole. Emphasis is placed on community participation at all stages of the planning-planting-production-consumption cycle. Although valid in theory, this sometimes produces more meetings than it does surviving, productive trees. The literature on the participatory approach seems to move professionals from positions of absolute power to a relatively superfluous role (even though one looks in vain for a historical case where a leadership class has voluntarily contributed to its own loss of power, prestige and wealth).
The URI approach moves between these extremes. We listen to community members' ideas and interests regarding what they wish to obtain from a natural resource system, what species or activities they prefer, how the planning, management and maintenance functions should be carried out and the means by which they would like the benefits and burdens of the programme to be distributed. However, our experience has demonstrated that there are many times when community members would prefer to have something done rather than to hold a meeting. Indeed, community members often suggest that, since professionals are available, they should put their expertise to use, although under the careful policy guidance of the community. Our participatory approach is one that empowers both the community and the professionals. We see the professional as an organizer and facilitator, balancing technical possibilities with ecosystem constraints and community needs within the context of societal goals, human and economic resources and community desires.
Another important distinction of the URI methodology is that the surrounding environment is included as part of the participatory approach. Factors affecting the quality and the quantity of a neighbourhood stream (land-use development, street runoff and toxic inputs) directly affect the quality of the human community. Therefore, the appropriate level of ecosystem restoration is connected to the expected level of neighbourhood revitalization.
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The URI in action: the Sandtown-Winchester community Over the past six months, URI and Forestry Division staff have worked with community leaders in the Sandtown-Winchester community. The primary goal of this effort is to revitalize the neighbourhood through a community-based and community-managed programme for the open spaces, streets and parks of the area. This requires an overall strategy that addresses the community's problems which include severe poverty, low levels of home ownership, a deteriorating educational system and a negative community image overall. The programme has focused on developing training and leadership programmes for the continued management of the project. Community members have also stressed the importance of promoting the historic and spiritual heritage of the community. URI and Forestry Division staff have worked with the community to develop a plan for three pilot community garden/tree efforts as well as street plantings along the two major avenues that cross the community. The objectives of the effort include the following: ECONOMIC OBJECTIVES · Job training programmes that integrate conservation training with business skills and basic education; · development of microbusinesses based on community gardens, greenhouses, agroforestry and recycling; · identification of long-term job and career paths in environmentally related professions for local residents; · reduction of the number of vacant lots and vacant homes; · an increase in the residence duration of renters and patterns of home ownership. SOCIAL OBJECTIVES · Creation of a sense of community identity and pride through tree and sidewalk plantings; · an increase in the number and improved quality of open spaces available to the community for recreation and other activities; · provision of fresh fruit and vegetables to community members by integrating community gardening activities with food distribution programmes that are already under way; · creation of a community-based organization for the planning and management of community gardens and tree-planting programmes · integration of community tree-planting activities with education programmes in local schools. ENVIRONMENTAL OBJECTIVES · Eliminate dumping of materials and toxic waste in Sandtown-Winchester; · identify other environmental hazards in the community; · programmes to help local residents understand and become more aware of their impact on regional resources such as the Chesapeake Bay (e.g. through the dumping of oil in storm sewers!. The overall plan is based on a five-year effort. URI will work with Forestry Division staff and community members to monitor and evaluate the programme. With each year, URI's involvement will diminish as community members gradually take control of the effort. |
Time-space relationships
Community forestry for urban areas operates at the intersection of space and time. Spatially, we ask: where do trees grow? How are they distributed? How many of a given species are in a given place? What is the pattern of age and species classes? Temporally, we ask: what are the trends in succession? What is the life cycle variation between species and site classes? What are the trends in species dominance patterns' Who planted these trees? Who owns them? Who benefits or gains from them?
Trees are grouped in contiguous associations that coincide with neighbourhood boundaries. We ask how the forest is organized and how it changes over time. We look for the key factors determining its organization and the processes - internal and external - leading to observed stability or instability in the forest systems.
A young community member participating in species identification
We have a similar conceptual approach for the neighbourhoods. How is the human species organized in space and time? How is stability maintained? How does the community respond to internal and external perturbations? How adaptive is the organizational structure of the community and how is it changing?
Forest systems and human systems are connected and the human-forest ecosystem is organized to produce a wide range of goods, benefits and services as desired by the human population. In urban community forestry the outputs are multiple and need to be balanced, with management directed as much towards human organization as it is towards forest organization. Consequently, the units of analysis are more numerous than may be the case in rural community forestry and are certainly more than in "traditional" forestry.
Our reading of rural community forestry activities in tropical countries suggests that three goals are necessary for development sustainable productivity; equity in the distribution of benefits and burdens of such productivity; and a sense of cultural and ecological continuity. Consequently, a significant aspect of our community forestry must be tied to real gains in productivity, learning, leadership, health, security, housing and employment within the community itself. However, the fragmentation of professional services simply accelerates community, decline. The solution of each individual challenge requires an integrated approach.
Our attempt at integration has revolved around five key aspects which have been given considerable attention in rural community development in the tropics, gender, property, organization, perception and technology. We treat these as elements which intersect one another but which can be examined as a particular constraint or opportunity. Therefore, they are both points of entry for "causing" change and they are means for monitoring consequences of given aspects of the programme. For example, in a community characterized by low esteem and irresponsibility among adult males, the sense of family responsibility, learning in school, community stability and pride are likely to be absent. One response would consequently be to try and provide means for altering this tendency. Such an opportunity may involve changing property rights to establish community gardens on abandoned, city-owned lots; reorganizing community institutions to develop local leadership and participation; or restoring and commemorating a park in the name of a famous local hero.
The Table illustrates how the units of analysis and these five aspects intersect to help community foresters, community leaders and community members to participate in understanding the nature of their social ecology and the necessary points of change. The following discussion provides empirical illustrations from specific community forestry activities.
Gender
Gender plays an important role in community forestry projects in Baltimore. In the Upton community, for example, there is a high level of single-parent families and unemployment. In general, there is a lack of constructive, male role models for the children in the neighbourhood. Forestry and gardening activities are led by several men in the community and revolve around working with the children (especially boys) in the area. In addition to the direct benefits of tree-planting and gardening, an essential goal of the programme is to develop interpersonal skills and to provide the children with positive male role models.
Gender and age also have an impact on community participation in urban forestry activities. Communities with a large population of young parents also have a strong mix of males and females who participate in community forestry projects. As the community becomes slightly older, women participate more than men. When most of the population is retired, men tend to participate more than the women.
Property rights
Property rights play a dynamic role in community forestry activities, since access to land and the formal recognition of local rights enable the community to regulate local resources. In the Hollins Market community (also known as Slumbusters), community members have used forestry projects (tree nurseries, pocket parks and sliver parcels) to reclaim derelict properties from absentee landowners. The neighbourhood association believes that these projects help to increase local control of the neighbourhood and to attract potential residents from outside the community (increased immigration). At the same time, local residents who are renters are more inclined to purchase a house in the neighbourhood (decreased emigration) and to make a commitment to the area because they feel that the community is stable and a desirable place to live. This investment in the community has financial as well as social rewards, since the value of their property will increase as more people choose to live in the area.
In the Greenmount West neighbourhood, the community has received official permission to develop tree nurseries and community gardens on city-owned properties. After the neighbourhood has developed a credible record and a sustainable organization for community management, the city will transfer the title to the community organization. In a similar example, the Stoney Run community has taken on the responsibility for the management of an entire stream valley park which runs through their neighbourhood. The community's management of the area ensures that the park is maintained at a higher level than the city could fulfil. This arrangement enables the community to make small repairs without relying on or waiting for city employees to respond. In some cases, the Department of Recreation and Parks works with the community on large projects, such as removing large, dead trees. In these instances, the department responds quickly to the community's requests in order to maintain a positive working relationship with the neighbourhood that will help the department to minimize its operating costs.
A URI collaborator demonstrates proper pruning techniques to community members
Some communities have worked to gain access or easements to land from non-governmental organizations and private businesses. In the Pigtown area, local residents have had traditional access and use (for community gardens) to the unused land along the B&O (Baltimore and Ohio) railway. After careful negotiations between B&O representatives and the neighbouring communities, B&O representatives have formally recognized the communities' traditional use of and rights to the land.
Organization
Community participation in urban forestry depends on the level of community organization. In some cases, the community already has a strong neighbourhood association, church leadership or informal neighbourhood leaders. In other cases, the Forestry Division works with selected individuals to help develop community leadership, tree steward training programmes and other community development activities. Overall, 30 communities participate in the Forestry Division's Community Forestry Association programme, which the Forestry Division initiated for all community tree stewards throughout the city in order to increase their effectiveness. The community forestry association meets four times a year and provides a forum for self-help, which enables the tree stewards to share experiences and ideas for improving community forestry projects. At the same time, the Forestry Division discusses planting schedules, available resources and training needs with the tree stewards. The Forestry Division has been able to initiate these types of community-based programmes because of the Department of Recreation and Parks Strategic Plan for Action, which was developed as a reorganization plan for working to meet people's needs through community-based programming and services.
Perceptions
Community participation shapes individual and group perceptions of their environment and themselves. For the past three years, the URI has worked on a work/training/environmental education programme for inner city youth. This programme has substantially improved the teenagers' image of themselves as individuals and their sense of pride as a community.
In a parallel effort, the URI has collaborated with Outward Bound for two years. A primary goal of the Chesapeake Bay Outward Bound programme is to provide experiences for inner city youth within the context of their own lives and their communities. Through the collaborative effort, Outward Bound's perception of the city's forest resources has changed. The group has become more flexible and begun to realize that there are extensive wildland resources in the city; that it has a large and important client base to serve in the city; and that it can connect its programmes to local job and career opportunities for inner city youth.
Changes in perceptions can also occur with the managing governmental organizations. Recently, the Department of Recreation and Parks recognized that, in addition to providing recreation services and managing parks, it has the additional role of providing stewardship for the natural resources of the city. In order to meet all three challenges in an effective, efficient and equitable manner, the department has begun to shift to a watershed, ecosystem approach and to reorganize its management districts based on the city's three watersheds.
This type of change in perception - who do we serve and what can we provide? has occurred in the Forestry Division as well. The concept, "We're not just street trees anymore. Trees are not the answer but they can be part of a solution to community development", has become a constant theme for the City Arborist. Abandoned lots, derelict properties and job training needs are now seen by the Forestry Division as resources for both community development and reforestation. The change in perception is providing many benefits to the Forestry Division, including financial savings for the city and its taxpayers. Initial estimates by URI staff indicate that savings may amount to US$43000 per 100 trees planted by the city over a ten-year period through its community forestry programme. Since the city plants nearly 3000 trees per year, this translates into a potential cost savings of $1.29 million per yearly planting (Subedi, 1992).
Technology changes
Changes in technology serve many roles, such as converting waste by-products into productive resources, increasing efficiency and improving community participation through computer technologies. For instance, the Forestry Division removes nearly 1000 trees each year. Most of these trees are more than 12 m in height. Traditionally, the logs have been taken to Camp Small, the Forestry Division's landfill in the city. Some logs are left outside the compound for city residents to cut into firewood. However, the log/landfill continues to grow. With the community forestry programme, the City Arborist has recognized that the landfill problem can be converted into a resource solution. New tub-grinder technologies permit all tree removals to be ground into wood chips and mulch. The community groups can use these materials in their tree nurseries, community gardens and street tree plantings.
In addition, these local, "free" resources enable the City Arborist to respond immediately to community requests without cumbersome paperwork or logistical coordination. Other technological changes have enabled the Forestry Division to improve its efficiency, effectiveness and distribution of resources. Many trees are lost to lawnmower damage in urban areas because of neglect by home-owners, lawn care professionals or city employees. The Forestry Division has begun to use tubex tubes (tree shelters that usually serve to prevent deer browse) as tree guards in parks and forest regeneration areas. Because these tree guards are inexpensive and effective with seedlings and saplings, the Forestry Division can plant many more smaller trees (meaning less cost and increased survival rates) than it could when it plants larger trees (which are less susceptible to vandalism or neglect).
Furthermore, the Forestry and Parks Divisions have begun to use tree shelters in the parks in their no-mow zones. These no-mow zones are really natural regeneration areas for increasing forest and meadow areas and wildlife habitat. The basis and methods for these natural regeneration areas are derived from URI research and department management goals to enhance the department's role as a steward of the city's natural environment.
In order to identify many of these forest regeneration areas, the URI has worked with the city to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS) which integrates biophysical and sociocultural information (land-use, vegetative cover, streams, watershed boundaries, soils, roads, vacant lots, land tenure and census data). This GIS also helps to facilitate community participation in project design, planning, implementation, management and monitoring.
The Department of Recreation and Parks has invested in a laptop computer to enable it to demonstrate and use its GIS in community meetings, thereby involving local residents in its planning and decision-making activities. Subsequently, URI staff can tailor forestry projects to specific neighbourhoods, as community members assess the potential success or limitations of the project. If community members and URI staff realize that they do not have enough information for the project, strategies are developed jointly to gather more information. In some cases, URI staff obtain additional information from state or city agencies; in other cases, URI staff work with community members to develop surveys to learn more about their neighbourhood. This process of analysing different types of information and discussing ideas through GIS maps provides a powerful means for community members to re-envision their community, to improve the accuracy of the information with which they and URI staff work and to monitor and evaluate forestry projects over time (Grove and Hohmann, 1992).
Aspects affecting programme failure or success
|
Unit of analysis/beneficiary |
Gender |
Property rights |
Organization |
Perception |
Technological changes |
|
Individual |
Access to resources |
Legitimacy |
Status |
Image |
Role |
|
Household |
Decision structure |
Ownership |
Division |
Reputation |
Appropriateness |
|
Community |
Role structure |
Regulation |
Autonomy |
Pride |
Options/impact |
|
Agency (public) |
(Adapt) response pattern |
Interest groups |
Survival |
Equity |
Distribution |
|
Agency (profit) |
(Conserve) resistance patterns |
Market choice |
Efficiency |
Public relations |
Control |
|
Agency (non-profit) |
(Change) innovation patterns |
Continuity |
Effectiveness |
Flexibility assessment |
Alternative |
Note
: Cells reflect the likely participatory desires or needs at that intersection of system and unit of analysis. These could be seen as a form of questions for research and/on planning, e.g. which gender has how much access to which resources for how long?
A measure of success for any community forestry programme is its ability to sustain itself. At some point, the URI's involvement will cease but Baltimore's community forestry programme must continue. This will depend on the ability of the URI to assist in institutionalizing the community forestry programme within the Forestry Division through training and budget changes, and its ability to measure its benefits and demonstrate them to policy-makers and decision-makers while developing leadership, organizational and technical skills at a local level. We have begun this process already.
At the same time, the URI has begun to work with other cities in order to transmit both the lessons we have learned and the models we have developed through our work in Baltimore. Over the past three years, this has occurred through publications in journals and technical guides, meetings and workshops with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and state forestry programmes, conferences on urban and community forestry, the training and education of students (from the United States and other countries) at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies as well as using Baltimore as a field and demonstration site for foresters to visit.
From our work in the URI programme in Baltimore and other cities, we have found that community participation in urban forestry programmes compels forest professionals to take a wider view of their role in society. Urban community forestry means more than street trees and city parks; it is about revitalizing cities. It is about taking responsibility for our own backyard.
It is clear that there are many ways by which individuals and communities mark the progress of their development. Most often, we treat material indicators - accumulating wealth, monuments, buildings and roadways as the primary measure of accomplishment. Yet, our daily behaviour and talk express a sense that these things, to which we give so much homage and importance, are rather trivial when compared with those issues that really measure and matter: the quality and development of our relations with other human beings, an improved understanding of ourselves and others, a gift of compassion or the exercise of civility in our daily lives; a life saved, an idea gained, a creative turning point made, a habitat saved or restored.
This is not to say that material improvement and well-being - skills learned, jobs accomplished, levels of living made better - are unimportant. Obviously, the needs of shelter, food, gainful employment, health and welfare are crucial domains in a civil society. However, any society that operates as if these things were everything in collective living would soon disappear into a dirge of mindless consumerism and materialism. The unravelling of societies driven only by materialist ideologies is clear evidence that matters of dignity, faith, liberty and hope are central motives to human action. Indeed, these motives are of such importance that our very lives will be spent in securing them.
Our programme sees forestry as an interdisciplinary, holistic approach, providing a variety of goods, benefits and services from a given forest ecosystem. This type of approach has always required the direct and continued participation of the human population. The URI effort is but a tiny step towards the expansion of the community forestry programme to the large wastelands that compose much of the United States' older central cities. Yet, the small, green seedlings are not to be judged by what they are, but by their promise of what could be.
Grove, J. M., Vachta, K., McDonough, M. & Burch, W.R., Jr. The Urban Resources Initiative: community benefits from forestry. In P.H. Gobster & J.F. Dwyer, Jr, eds. Urban and high recreation settings. Proceedings of the urban forestry, ethnic minorities and the environment sessions. North American Symposium on Society and Resource Management, Madison, Wisconsin, 17-22 May 1992. USDA Forest Service. General technical report NC-xxx. St Paul, Minnesota, NC Forest Experiment Station. (In press)
Grove, J.M. & Hohmann, M. 1992. Social forestry and GIS. J. Forestry, 90(12): 10-15.
Subedi, B. 1992. Key elements of urban community forestry: a participatory action research model for urban community forestry management and extension activities. URI Working Paper No. 5. New Haven, Connecticut, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Turnbull, C.M. 1972. The mountain people. New York, Simon & Schuster.
