The Environment Forum with Sonja Dümpelmann | Trees and the City: A History of Public Health

Why do we plant and often protect trees in cities? Throughout history, humans have attributed healthy urban forests with a role in fostering a healthy citizenry. But how has this claim been substantiated, and why and how exactly did trees become integral to the Western idea of what constitutes a healthy city and planet? The presentation shows how trees were incidental and intentional vehicles for better understanding human-environment relationships. Knowledge about trees and their effects on human health and wellbeing was related to urbanization and by extension to colonial expansion and geopolitics. Regardless of the phenomenological, mythical, often hypothetical, and proto-scientific nature of much early tree knowledge, it had significant impact upon how early design professionals conceived of and shaped the built environment.