Planting Priorities

With so much canopy cover to grow in a such a short timeline, where do we start? How do we determine where to plant? Planting projects use a number of criteria to determine where trees are planted first. We've list several of the criteria below:

• Consistency with the Comprehensive Plan, Urban Forest Policy Element
• Street and freeway rights-of-ways, especially highly visible locations such as business districts and major corridors
• Parks, schools and other publicly owned property when and where appropriate
• Demonstration projects in diverse areas representative of the range of land use and development patterns in the City
• Within the Flett or Leach watersheds
• Low canopy cover areas with high residential density and lower incomes

Tree planting is generally done throughout out the City each year, in every neighborhood district to ensure resource equity; however, the highest priority planting projects are areas with low canopy cover, such as those in the map to the right.

In 2013, Ben Wells, then a student with University of Washington Tacoma working on a GIS certificate, took our canopy cover data and further analyzed the data in addition to Tacoma's residential density and 2010 demographic data.