From play to follow and coverage: how a recreation helps folks rethink bushes in cities – Stockholm Atmosphere Institute

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City Labor-a-tree is a first-of-its-kind board recreation that helps folks to reimagine metropolis bushes. This recreation brings collectively numerous stakeholders, from metropolis planners to youngsters, to design future city treescapes. SEI researcher Joanne Morris leads the undertaking by mixing play, follow, and coverage to encourage conversations on inclusive city areas within the UK.
Joanne Morris, Jennifer Aghaji / Printed on 29 July 2025 / York
Photo: Joanne Morris SEI
Bushes are usually not simply a part of the panorama however are woven into our reminiscences and day by 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 sizzling days and supply locations to collect, replicate, 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 recreation known 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 fanatics. 
City areas have to broaden their tree cowl to distribute advantages equitably and to fulfill tree-planting targets. In our latest analysis from the Branching Out project, stakeholders struggled to find out the sensible actions to absorb attaining their best future treescapes. 
The Branching Out undertaking, 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 folks 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 recreation undertaking. 
By means of storytelling, workshops, and neighborhood engagement, contributors shared reminiscences and imagined greener futures. However translating these desires into motion proved more difficult. “What if folks may ‘develop’ a treescape in only a few hours and get their arms 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 workforce 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 help 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 setting throughout completely different seasons and over time,” says Joanne. “They face choices resembling the place to plant new bushes, methods to maintain them alive and methods to defend 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 Put up-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 doubtlessly minimize down.  
 
Photo: Joanne Morris / SEI
On the coronary heart of the sport is a robust studying message: the thought of the best tree, in the best place. “With a complete metropolis to play with, you don’t have to fulfill everyone’s expectations of bushes in a single spot,” explains Joanne. “The sport reveals that strategic planting throughout completely different areas can create a greater, extra resilient treescape total.” As an alternative of utilizing conventional forex, the sport introduces different important sources resembling time, neighborhood involvement and collective effort. “We needed to maneuver away from cash and as a substitute deal with the actual prices and values like folks’s agendas, time and cooperation,” says Joanne. 
Bushes planted in 12 months 0 develop throughout gaming rounds, turning into medium or massive by 12 months 5, giving gamers a way of time and impression. Playtests revealed that even with simplified guidelines, gamers introduced their questions and data to the sport, typically weaving in private tales and native considerations. Gamers work collectively to realize shared and particular person objectives, 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 varied 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 could be a great device for related metropolis councils to make use of with communities to seek the advice of on native treescape planning.  
Now the workforce is trying forward. Who would possibly 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 dwelling? How can it help 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 by way of the York Environmental Sustainability Institute (YESI) as a part of the Environmental Sustainability at York (ESAY) initiative.
Undertaking / YESI Fellows collaborate on interdisciplinary environmental science. 2025 Fellow Joanne Morris, at SEI, leads a treescape undertaking.
2025 / About Forests
Undertaking / 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
Undertaking / 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
Function / The Branching Out undertaking related researchers, policymakers and communities to combine the social and cultural worth of UK metropolis treescapes into planning.
25 February 2025 / About Cities and Wellbeing
Function / This Worldwide Day of Forests, SEI shares 4 insights into how forests help 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 replicate the monetary advantages of treescapes.
31 October 2024 / About Forests
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