Trees please: is Burnaby experiencing ‘tree inequity’?

How many trees can you see from your living room window?

In most parts of Canada, it depends on economic status—but in Burnaby, it’s skewed slightly differently than in other cities across the country.

A study from Nature Canada released in September found that, for the most part, poorer and racialized Canadians consistently have less access to urban tree canopy than their richer neighbours. That means the less money you make, the fewer trees and greenery near your home.

And access to green space and tree canopy, the organization notes, is important.

“[Trees] sequester and store carbon, keep cities cool, (mitigating urban heat islands), serve as habitats for many species, and shield us from extreme weather like floods and landslides. Just as importantly, they support our mental and physical well-being. Through the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, Canadians have come to appreciate the immense value of urban trees and forests,” reads the report.

But Burnaby is unique.

Central Park, an urban forest oasis

The study found that lower-income communities in Burnaby actually had higher access to tree canopies than wealthier ones.

What could be a driving factor behind that access? Andy Yan, adjunct professor with SFU’s Urban Studies program, speculated that it could simply relate to how housing in Burnaby was built.

Take Central Park, for instance—86 hectares of towering firs, cedars, and maples, along with winding trails and open green space within walking distance of one of the highest-density areas of the city.

An interactive tool by the Vancouver Sun mapping green space in Metro Vancouver shows that the Central Park area—stretching south of Kingsway until Imperial Street, between Patterson Avenue and Willingdon Avenue—has the highest percentage of green space in the entire city at 67.5%. Even the area including Deer Lake Park has a lower percentage of green space, at 66.5%.

The park is also directly next to a huge portion of some of Burnaby’s most affordable housing.

In the 1960s, many of the single-family homes that littered the Central Park area south of Kingsway were replaced with low-rise walk-ups and homes, even then, to lower-income families—many of them immigrants.

Yan noted that those buildings have “aged into affordability,” providing some of the more affordable rents in the city—although, as it was in the post-Second World War era, Metrotown has once become the epicenter of modern densification in Burnaby. Many of those low-rises have already been replaced with high-rises or are slated for redevelopment in the next few years.

Millennials in Burnaby have less access to vegetation

Another study from UBC forestry researchers looked at how socio-economic factors impacted access to vegetation in 31 cities across Canada, including Burnaby. It found that, in many areas, factors like age and education level also impact how close people live to greenery.

“To really understand why vegetation is distributed as it is you have to look at the history of development in the city. Often, in cities that don’t have that link between education and vegetation access, we do see higher-density developments or rental developments near greener areas, or in older neighborhoods where trees have had more time to grow,” said report co-author Lorien Nesbitt.

“It may also be that the residents have other priorities in those neighbourhoods, pressures that are shaping where they live.”

That’s not to say, however, that inequity doesn’t impact who in Burnaby lives in proximity to greenery.

“We did find that millennials in Burnaby had a little bit less access to vegetation than other parts of the population. So I think there are various ways to look at what equity means,” she said.

Trees and infrastructure in conflict

Burnaby is one of the greenest major cities in Canada, with parks and conservation areas taking up 25% of the city’s total area. However, Nature Canada suggests that municipalities should refrain from taking a top-down approach by setting citywide targets for greenery, and should instead focus on the neighbourhood level to ensure “tree equity.”

Instead, the organization is advocating for cities to follow the “3-30-300 rule” where “everyone should be able to see at least three trees from their home; communities should ensure a 30% tree canopy in all neighbourhoods; all residents should have a greenspace of at least one hectare within 300 metres of where they’re living.”

Nesbitt, meanwhile, stressed that densification in itself is not to blame for the erosion of green space in rapidly expanding cities.

But she said it’s up to municipalities and developers to make sure they’re not, as the Nature Canada report put it, giving a “secondary role of trees during the development of infrastructure”.

“There’s sometimes discourse that sees housing and greenery as occupying different spaces, when they can occupy the same space. Really, what we want is trees and other vegetation near where people are living. There are lots of ways to maintain tree canopy while densifying,” Nesbitt said.

She said that involves protecting and prioritizing established trees on the sites of future developments, rather than replacing them with newer, younger trees that may have a tough time surviving.

“It has to do with having guidelines or regulations on how to protect existing canopy while doing redevelopment, but also sort of more of an orientation towards prioritizing maintaining trees, and looking for how to design our buildings so that they are not in conflict [with trees].”