City Councilman John Lee introduced a motion Tuesday calling for a review and update of LA\u2019s decades-old tree-spacing guidelines, which he says may be unnecessarily preventing new trees from being planted in otherwise suitable locations.<\/p>\n
The motion instructs the Bureau of Streets Services\u2019 Urban Forestry Division and other relative departments to report within 90 days with recommendations to modernize the guidelines. The report is expected to evaluate existing standards and how they affect potential planting locations and identify policy, design and infrastructure changes that could expand the city\u2019s tree canopy.<\/p>\n
Many of the city\u2019s spacing requirements are internal department policies rather than requirements set forth by ordinance, according to Lee\u2019s office. The councilman argues that updating these practices could open up thousands of additional planting locations while protecting sidewalks, utilities, street lights, traffic visibility and public safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cLos Angeles has made expanding its tree canopy a priority, but some of the city\u2019s own guidelines may be limiting where trees can actually be planted,\u201d Lee said in a statement. \u201cWe need to make sure those rules reflect current standards and allow us to add shade where it is needed most without compromising safety or infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lee also cited research by the USC Dornsife\u2019s Spatial Sciences Institute and Public Exchange, which found that Los Angeles has some of the most restrictive internal street tree-spacing standards in the nation. The research indicates that updating these policies could increase the number of viable planting locations, in particular for neighborhoods facing the greatest heat burdens.<\/p>\n
The matter will be heard by the council\u2019s Energy and Environment Committee at a future meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City Councilman John Lee introduced a motion Tuesday calling for a review and update of LA\u2019s decades-old tree-spacing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7310,5794,169128,39406,48,52,51,47,50,49,15060,169129,13795],"class_list":["post-423855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-calls","tag-councilman","tag-guidelines","tag-john","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-review","tag-spacing","tag-tree"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}