As part of its Urban Studies Speaker Series, Hoyt Architects welcomed professional arborist John Snow on February 18 for his presentation, The Urban Forest Lifecycle: Designing Cities with Trees That Last 50 Years or More. Snow is the president of the Florida Urban Forestry Council, owner-operator of Tree Check Up LLC, a Board-Certified Master Arborist and has been working in arboriculture and urban forestry for over 30 years. Below is an excerpt from the full Q&A interview that will be featured in the July/August issue of SRQ Magazine.

SRQ: You spoke about a pervasive cycle of planting and removal of trees in urban areas long before the trees reach their full canopy potential. Why does that happen?

Snow: I think the issue revolves around most people having a hard time visualizing longer timeframes. People can budget for a year, but when you start thinking about five years from now, things get a little more hazy quite quickly. You say 10 years from now and now it’s a very gray area. When you’re planning trees, you’re thinking about 50 or 80 years into the future. I hear quite often, “well, I might not even be here by then, so what does it matter?” Humans have inherent short-term thinking. The problem is, that doesn’t match the lifespan of trees that we’re planting in urban landscapes. I don’t think that there’s ever going to be perfection, but there are ways that we can begin shaping things to work better and that starts with the planning phase of implementing trees in urban environments.