From play to observe and coverage: how a sport helps individuals rethink bushes in cities – Stockholm Atmosphere Institute

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City Labor-a-tree is a first-of-its-kind board sport that helps individuals to reimagine metropolis bushes. This sport brings collectively numerous stakeholders, from metropolis planners to kids, to design future city treescapes. SEI researcher Joanne Morris leads the venture 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
Bushes are usually not simply a part of the panorama however are woven into our recollections and every day lives. Replicate on the tree you climbed as a toddler, 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, bushes have been silent companions in our lives. 
However what does the long run maintain for the bushes in our cities and cities? 
Within the UK, the place urbanization is rising and inexperienced house is shrinking, a novel sport referred to as Urban Labor-a-tree is imagining a brand new sort of treescape, one that features everybody, from metropolis planners to highschool youngsters, birds to board sport fanatics. 
City areas must broaden their tree cowl to distribute advantages equitably and to fulfill tree-planting targets. In our current analysis from the Branching Out project, stakeholders struggled to find out the sensible actions to absorb attaining their ultimate future treescapes. 
The Branching Out venture, a part of the Future Treescapes program, introduced collectively numerous voices from the humanities and humanities, social sciences, and pure sciences to achieve a deeper understanding of how bushes form our cities and the way we will create more healthy city treescapes for the long run. 
“We noticed how a lot individuals worth bushes – 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 sport venture. 
Via storytelling, workshops, and group engagement, individuals shared recollections and imagined greener futures. However translating these desires into motion proved more difficult. “What if individuals may ‘develop’ a treescape in just some 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 sport designer Prasad Sandbhor to translate Branching Out analysis into the City Labor-a-tree board sport. Impressed by Prasad’s current board sport, Birds in the City, which explores the small actions people can take to create a welcoming habitat for birds, the group developed a sport 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 bushes in an city atmosphere throughout totally different seasons and over time,” says Joanne. “They face choices comparable to the place to plant new bushes, methods to preserve them alive and methods to shield these which can be already there.”  
Bringing the sport to life visually was the work of Carolyn Bowe, an SEI postdoctoral visible artist, who helped translate Publish-it notes and summary concepts right into a cohesive visible construction and id for tangible gameplay, giving gamers a bodily object to plant, develop and doubtlessly reduce down.  
 
Photo: Joanne Morris / SEI
On the coronary heart of the sport is a strong studying message: the concept of the correct tree, in the correct place. “With an entire metropolis to play with, you don’t have to fulfill all people’s expectations of bushes in a single spot,” explains Joanne. “The sport reveals that strategic planting throughout totally different areas can create a greater, extra resilient treescape general.” As an alternative of utilizing conventional forex, the sport introduces different important assets comparable to time, group involvement and collective effort. “We needed to maneuver away from cash and as an alternative concentrate on the true prices and values like individuals’s agendas, time and cooperation,” says Joanne. 
Bushes planted in Yr 0 develop throughout gaming rounds, turning into medium or giant by Yr 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 realize 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 individuals attending the various occasions requested copies of the sport to take again to their lecture rooms, group centres, or use in planning classes in each private and non-private areas. Others agreed it might be an excellent instrument for related metropolis councils to make use of with communities to seek the advice of on native treescape planning.  
Now the group is wanting forward. Who would possibly use the sport? What are they taking away from it? Can the sport be tailored for colleges with lesson plans? Might 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 sport classes within the coming months to discover these questions.” 
This venture 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.
Mission / YESI Fellows collaborate on interdisciplinary environmental science. 2025 Fellow Joanne Morris, at SEI, leads a treescape venture.
2025 / About Forests
Mission / Novel strategies to map the social and cultural worth of bushes to tell coverage choices relating to city treescapes.
2021 – 2025 / About Cities, Forests and Mitigation
Mission / 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 venture 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 bushes 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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