> A big goal of the city’s heat mitigation plan is to more than double the city’s tree cover from roughly 10% to 25% by 2030 by planting drought-resistant trees like elms, ashes, and Chinese pistaches, prioritizing historic neighborhoods in the urban core.
That's nice, but just on my street I've seen neighbors take down 3 trees over the past couple years without replacing them. Trees are expensive to trim and care for properly. I haven't heard of anything addressing that. The poorest neighborhoods have almost zero tree cover. The heat + water are and will become larger issues in Phoenix in the next few years and it feels like leadership isn't doing much. On the water front I've heard really interesting things that Las Vegas is doing that should be replicated here (reducing lawns and water waste - example article: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/las-vegas-decla...).
That's nice, but just on my street I've seen neighbors take down 3 trees over the past couple years without replacing them. Trees are expensive to trim and care for properly. I haven't heard of anything addressing that. The poorest neighborhoods have almost zero tree cover. The heat + water are and will become larger issues in Phoenix in the next few years and it feels like leadership isn't doing much. On the water front I've heard really interesting things that Las Vegas is doing that should be replicated here (reducing lawns and water waste - example article: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/las-vegas-decla...).