This book provides a comprehensive overview of the essential role of trees and forests in cities and examines the creative approaches cities around the world are taking to protect trees and expand their urban forests. Moving beyond the view that trees are luxuries and therefore non-essential to the life of a city, the book examines urban tree policies and approaches that foster tree protection, including tree codes and bylaws, and calls for greater community engagement to preserve this important facet of urban life. Through an international range of examples and case studies, featuring cities in the United States, Canada, Singapore, the Netherlands, Australia, France, New Zealand, Mexico, Sierra Leone, and the United Kingdom. The book offers best practice examples where trees have been further integrated into the fabric of urban planning and design, including forested towers, interior rainforests, tiny urban forests, and metropolitan forests. Written by a leading authority in the field, this is a fascinating read for researchers, students, and practitioners in urban planning, landscape architecture, and environmental policy and planning.

Native and imported, sacred and ordinary, culinary and floral, favourites of various kings and commoners over the centuries, trees are the most visible signs of nature in cities, fundamentally shaping their identities. Trees are storehouses of the complex origins and histories of city growth, coming as they do from different parts of the world, brought in by various local and colonial rulers. From the tree planted by Sarojini Naidu at Dehradun's clock tower to those planted by Sher Shah Suri and Jahangir on Grand Trunk Road, trees in India have served, above all, as memory keepers. They are our roots: their trunks our pillars, their bark our texture, and their branches our shade. Trees are nature's own museums. Drawing on extensive research, Cities and Canopies is a book about both the specific and the general aspects of these gentle life-giving creatures.

A Yale sociology professor discusses how everyday people meet the demands of urban living through islands of civility he calls "cosmopolitan canopies" and describes how activities carried out under this canopy can ease racial tensions and promote harmony.

An updated and revised discussion of the fundamental conflict in the perception of nature and an expression of the essential need for an environmental view when approaching urban design.

James R. Holton