Safe Streets: Using Trees to Transform Urban Life
By Katie Habgood, AICP
Katie Habgood, AICP presented at the 2024 Florida Planning Conference, her presentation “Safe Streets: Using Trees to Transform Urban Life” with Deb Hilbert, Ph.D. and certified arborist, at the 2024 Florida Planning Conference in Tampa, Florida. More than 1,100 planning professionals attended the conference.
Often treated as “nice to have” and removed from project budgets when things get tight, street trees are essential to creating safer, healthier communities. Attendees learned about pedestrian safety, greenspace equity, and successful integration of street trees into urban plans. Katie shared the connections between pedestrian safety and Tree Equity scores, ways trees positively impact urban planning, and tree planting space recommendations and solutions based on urban forestry research. The multidisciplinary discussion of Green Infrastructure aimed to empower attendees to create spaces that are safer, more resilient, and better able to facilitate connections between nature and people of all backgrounds.
