The influence of building renovation and rental housing on urban trees

Abstract

Urban forest ecosystems are complex and vulnerable social–ecological systems. The relationship between urban forests and housing is particularly variable and uncertain. We examine the influence of building renovation and rental housing on public trees at the parcel and street-section scale in a residential neighbourhood in Toronto, Canada. We use empirical data describing multiple tree inventories and government open data describing building permit applications to test for effects on urban forest structure, tree mortality, and tree planting. We found that the presence and number of building permits significantly predicted mortality at both scales, while planting was positively correlated with building permits at the street-section scale only. Multi-unit parcels had significantly lower rates of planting than single-unit parcels and multi-unit housing was positively correlated with mortality at the street-section scale. These findings suggest that where concentrated changes in housing stock are occurring, substantial losses of trees and associated ecosystem services are possible.

Keywords:

• urban forest
• housing
• building permit
• mortality
• open data

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Ryerson University research assistants Amber Grant and Claire Stevenson-Blythe, who assisted with field data collection. Thank you to the residents of the Harbord Village neighbourhood and the Harbord Village Residents Association for permitting field data collection and sharing existing data. Funding for this project was provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Ryerson University. Lastly, we are thankful for the additional funding and support from the Canadian Geospatial and Open Data Research Partnership (geothink.ca), which is a five-year partnership grant funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; Ryerson University; and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 895-2012-1023].