The Department of Planning and Development commissioned a study of urban villages. I won’t go into the whole report, but one of the indicators of the success of growth happening in urban villages–the 37 neighborhood areas target for growth in the City’s Comprehensive Plan–is tree canopy. It’s important to note that one of the chief complaints of neighborhood activists opposing growth is that we’re losing tree coverage.

Here’s what one group, Friends of Urban Forests, declares on its website.

With increased development and population growth, Seattle is losing its trees. While other cities around the Northwest, like Portland, Oregon and Lake Forest Park, WA have recently strengthened their tree ordinances, Seattle has actually proposed legislation to significantly decrease protections for trees. Rather than an open process involving the public to draft new legislation, the Seattle City Council has asked the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) to draft new legislation. Unfortunately they have a conflict of interest in their mission which is to help people build and develop, not protect trees.

Hmmm. That’s not what the report says. And the report was managed by none other than Peter Steinbrueck, hardly a developer advocate. The report found that:

Canopy cover has increased within all urban villages in the study except Lake City, which has seen a small decrease. Ballard leads tree canopy coverage improvements with an increase of about 7% over the last 20 years.

Here’s a table with the data.

So that well worn trope that new growth is destroying our tree canopy is false. Just ask builders who have to bend their projects around trees, replace and maintain trees, and face with delays by neighbors fighting their projects in the name of trees. The truth is that the new rules are often a hassle, but maybe they are working. Builders and developers don’t hate trees. And DPD pays close attention to tree preservation and replacement.

The lesson in all this is that when we pay attention to data and the facts we learn something. Maybe City Councilmembers will point out the facts when they are asked to pass growth killing legislation in the name of saving trees. We are growing trees AND we’re growing neighborhoods. Let’s keep doing both.