Urban forest futures: crystallising public sentiment and concern through insights from the Melbourne, Australia ‘email a tree’ initiative.

Keywords: Urban trees, sentiment analysis, social media data, emails, Melbourne
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 05:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 06:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 9

Abstract

Urban trees are at the centre of scientific and policy concerns in cities: human health and well-being, habitability in the face of climate change, biodiversity loss, sustainability and social justice, to name a few. Global and national policies have prioritised the need for increasing the coverage and diversity of urban forests as well as providing more equitable access to urban greenspaces. Despite increasing concern and attention to urban trees however, few studies have examined public sentiments and citizen concerns about urban trees, nor how such information might be useful in developing public policy. Drawing on a unique data set – the ‘email a tree initiative’ – held in public trust by the City of Melbourne, we examine how publics engage with Melbourne’s trees and how people express concern for trees, for urban forest communities, and for the future. Comparing the Melbourne tree inventory with the ‘email data’ through descriptive statistics, sentiment (VADER) analysis and spatial mapping, we identify three key concerns: tree age and loss; tree locality and place; and tree identity and local cultures. We underscore why analysis of emotion is useful in understanding relationships with urban trees and show how insights into public sentiment and concern might be used to better calibrate scientific and policy focus, re-set expectations about policy outcomes and how these might be achieved, and create meaningful opportunities for active citizen participation in urban forest governance.