:: Discussion ::

CITYgreen and UFORE provide an important new way to frame the value of the urban forest and integrate it into development, planning, and policy decisions. This framing has allowed advocates to argue more persuasively for policy that protects and augments the urban forest, and in many cases, these efforts have been successful.

Even if they are not used as policy tools, these application have great educational value. They reveal the connections between urban trees and the environmental processes that ultimately impact urban dwellers, and they allow these connections to be explored and better understood.

Out of the discussion held at MIT, on Dec 11, 2006, the following issues and questions were raised:

-- The science underlying these models need to be continuously evaluated and updated.

-- Many planners and designers had never heard of these applications, but felt they could be useful. How can these applications increase their impact?

-- The potential educational impact of these tools seems to be underexploited. How can these tools be ecnouraged in the school setting? Developing curriculum is a good start, but how can schools be made aware of these applications (particularly CITYgreen)?

- One person noted: "There seems to be a step between the output stage and the implementation
stage which is missing that involves making sense of those numbers and figuring out how to really make them mean something to the people in the development process." Perhaps more work need to be done to contextualize these values. For example, how significant is it to sequester 500 ibs of pollutants, in the larger city context? This could be part of the analysis output.