From play to observe and coverage: how a recreation helps folks rethink timber in cities – Stockholm Surroundings Institute

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City Labor-a-tree is a first-of-its-kind board recreation that helps folks to reimagine metropolis timber. This recreation brings collectively various stakeholders, from metropolis planners to youngsters, to design future city treescapes. SEI researcher Joanne Morris leads the undertaking by mixing play, observe, and coverage to encourage conversations on inclusive city areas within the UK.
Joanne Morris, Jennifer Aghaji / Revealed on 29 July 2025 / York
Photo: Joanne Morris SEI
Timber usually are not simply a part of the panorama however are woven into our reminiscences and each day lives. Replicate on the tree you climbed as a baby, the one which held your favorite swing, or the tall oak that shades a cherished bench within the park. They provide a cool refuge on scorching days and supply locations to collect, mirror, and dream. Throughout cultures and generations, timber have been silent companions in our lives. 
However what does the longer term maintain for the timber in our cities and cities? 
Within the UK, the place urbanization is rising and inexperienced house is shrinking, a novel recreation referred to as Urban Labor-a-tree is imagining a brand new sort of treescape, one that features everybody, from metropolis planners to high school youngsters, birds to board recreation fans. 
City areas must develop their tree cowl to distribute advantages equitably and to satisfy tree-planting targets. In our latest analysis from the Branching Out project, stakeholders struggled to find out the sensible actions to absorb attaining their ideally suited future treescapes. 
The Branching Out undertaking, a part of the Future Treescapes program, introduced collectively various voices from the humanities and humanities, social sciences, and pure sciences to achieve a deeper understanding of how timber form our cities and the way we will create more healthy city treescapes for the longer term. 
“We noticed how a lot folks worth timber – ometimes with out realizing it till invited to share tales about their interactions with them,” says Joanne Morris, a lead researcher on the City Labor-a-tree recreation undertaking. 
By storytelling, workshops, and neighborhood engagement, contributors shared reminiscences and imagined greener futures. However translating these goals into motion proved tougher. “What if folks may ‘develop’ a treescape in only a few hours and get their palms on the planning, face the challenges, and discover the trade-offs of city tree care?” asks Joanne. 
That’s the place the sport got here in. 
Having brushed with severe gaming in a previous project, Joanne partnered with utilized recreation designer Prasad Sandbhor to translate Branching Out analysis into the City Labor-a-tree board recreation. Impressed by Prasad’s latest board recreation, Birds in the City, which explores the small actions people can take to create a welcoming habitat for birds, the crew developed a recreation the place gamers may discover the method of planting, rising, caring for a various city forest and experiment with constructing a sustainable, inclusive city treescape. 
With assist from the YESI Discipline Hopping Fellowship on the University of York, they started creating City Labor-a-tree. “We designed a prototype the place gamers expertise planting and managing timber in an city surroundings throughout totally different seasons and over time,” says Joanne. “They face choices similar to the place to plant new timber, how you can preserve them alive and how you can shield these which are already there.”  
Bringing the sport to life visually was the work of Carolyn Bowe, an SEI postdoctoral visible artist, who helped translate Submit-it notes and summary concepts right into a cohesive visible construction and identification for tangible gameplay, giving gamers a bodily object to plant, develop and probably reduce down.  
 
Photo: Joanne Morris / SEI
On the coronary heart of the sport is a strong studying message: the thought of the suitable tree, in the suitable place. “With a complete metropolis to play with, you don’t have to satisfy everyone’s expectations of timber in a single spot,” explains Joanne. “The sport reveals that strategic planting throughout totally different areas can create a greater, extra resilient treescape total.” As a substitute of utilizing conventional foreign money, the sport introduces different very important sources similar to time, neighborhood involvement and collective effort. “We needed to maneuver away from cash and as an alternative give attention to the true prices and values like folks’s agendas, time and cooperation,” says Joanne. 
Timber planted in 12 months 0 develop throughout gaming rounds, turning into medium or giant by 12 months 5, giving gamers a way of time and impression. Playtests revealed that even with simplified guidelines, gamers introduced their questions and information to the sport, usually weaving in private tales and native considerations. Gamers work collectively to attain shared and particular person targets, highlighting the significance of collaboration in real-life city forestry efforts. 
Since its creation, City Labor-a-tree has travelled throughout festivals and conferences, beginning conversations and dialogues. A number of folks attending the various occasions requested copies of the sport to take again to their lecture rooms, neighborhood centres, or use in planning periods in each private and non-private areas. Others agreed it might be a great software for related metropolis councils to make use of with communities to seek the advice of on native treescape planning.  
Now the crew is wanting forward. Who may use the sport? What are they taking away from it? Can the sport be tailored for faculties with lesson plans? May or not it’s printed at house? How can it assist native councils in consulting communities? 
“These are the questions we’re exploring subsequent,” says Joanne. “We’re excited to run extra recreation periods within the coming months to discover these questions.” 
This undertaking is funded by the College of York through the York Environmental Sustainability Institute (YESI) as a part of the Environmental Sustainability at York (ESAY) initiative.
Challenge / YESI Fellows collaborate on interdisciplinary environmental science. 2025 Fellow Joanne Morris, at SEI, leads a treescape undertaking.
2025 / About Forests
Challenge / Novel strategies to map the social and cultural worth of timber to tell coverage choices relating to city treescapes.
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Challenge / Analysis and Studying for Sustainable Intensification of Smallholder Livestock Worth Chains in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Tanzania (ResLeSS).
2016 – 2020 / About Food and agriculture, Land use and Participation
Characteristic / The Branching Out undertaking linked researchers, policymakers and communities to combine the social and cultural worth of UK metropolis treescapes into planning.
25 February 2025 / About Cities and Wellbeing
Characteristic / This Worldwide Day of Forests, SEI shares 4 insights into how forests assist meals safety, local weather resilience and sustainable cities.
21 March 2025 / About Cities, Ecosystems and Supply Chains
Journal article / Financial valuations of timber should take account of their social and cultural values if they’re to precisely mirror the monetary advantages of treescapes.
31 October 2024 / About Forests
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