I live in the suburbs (I know it sucks, but that’s just my current family situation.) and lately I’ve been trying to get outside more for my mental and physical health. The problem is, the suburbs are kind of shit for this. Obviously there’s all the car-centric infrastructure which makes walking more difficult and dangerous, but there’s not much I could conceivably do about that in any reasonable amount of time. However, the other big issue I’ve found, especially as it’s gotten so hot this summer, is there are barely any trees, and thus barely any shade anywhere along the sidewalks. Even the local park doesn’t have much shade aside from a small area in the corner. So it’s really unpleasant to walk anywhere. I get super sweaty even taking a leisurely walk on most days of the summer.
So I was thinking that maybe I could lobby the town to plant more trees such that most of the sidewalks are at least partially shady. I know there are some barriers to this like the tree roots cracking sidewalks and probably some NIMBYs who only view nature as being ornamental, and of course this would cost money to do. So it wouldn’t be a trivial thing, but I don’t think it’s entirely outside the realm of possibility either.
What do you think are some strategies I could use to make this happen? What sort of things do I need to do or account for? Obviously it’s going to be different depending on the town, but if there is any kind of general idea of how to go about this I would appreciate hearing it.
Reach out to the Arbor Day foundation and see what kind of resources they can send you. There’s also a group called tree city USA that will give your municipality a gold star and a special sign and put them on a list if they have some number of trees. After you win trees you can fight for native wildflowers and reeds and become a bee city USA member too.
Getting shit done in local government is all about greasing your turd up so it flies out and lands with a triumphal plop. Almost all of that is planning and preparation because it’s not like you can reach up in there with both hands and rub castor oil on that stuck fucker.
So start by talking to people around you. Don’t tell them you’re planning on submitting some thing, just hear out what they have to say. Write it down afterwards so you can come back to it later. One thing people always bring up with trees is the cost and the damaged sidewalks and roads. It’s easy to figure out the cost, just call the municipal maintenance office and ask how much it would cost for them to take care of 200 more trees than they have to deal with now. Same thing for the sidewalks. Often times they’ll say something to the effect of “we’d have to replace em one year earlier than we were already planning on doing”.
Anyway figure out what you actually want to do, what it’s gonna cost, who’s gonna do it, what the effects will be, who’s it gonna piss off, how they’re gonna be ameliorated etc.
Once you have the effects of what you’re proposing all together you wanna bring it up to the right committee or board. For you the reason to do this as opposed to taking the tom goes to the mayor route is that the committee will have a bunch of people who can ask the right questions and get your turd perfectly shaped and lubricated. Once they like it they’ll do an up/down vote on a motion to move it to the governing body of the municipality.
The whole point of going through the committee is to take that path instead of having to be a person who gets on the nightly news yelling in meetings. It means your proposal will be part of the consent agenda, which is a bigass packet of “stuff we all agree on and have already decided to do” that gets a big up/down vote. People who have their stuff in the consent agenda might speak in support of their particular thing, but it’s usually more of a “we should all be proud that with the adoption of this proposal we’re increasing walkability, property values, safety, natural beauty and improving the lives of our community members” as opposed to “here’s my cockamamie scheme to plant trees!”.
Anyway that’s how you do it. Once the consent agenda you’re on gets passed you just gotta do what you said you were gonna in the way you said you were gonna using the resources you said it would take.