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

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City Labor-a-tree is a first-of-its-kind board recreation that helps individuals 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 challenge by mixing play, observe, 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 will not be simply a part of the panorama however are woven into our recollections and day by day lives. Mirror 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 assemble, replicate, and dream. Throughout cultures and generations, timber have been silent companions in our lives. 
However what does the long run maintain for the timber in our cities and cities? 
Within the UK, the place urbanization is rising and inexperienced area is shrinking, a novel recreation referred to as Urban Labor-a-tree is imagining a brand new form of treescape, one that features everybody, from metropolis planners to highschool children, birds to board recreation lovers. 
City areas have to 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 soak up attaining their supreme future treescapes. 
The Branching Out challenge, a part of the Future Treescapes program, introduced collectively various voices from the humanities and humanities, social sciences, and pure sciences to realize a deeper understanding of how timber form our cities and the way we are able to create more healthy city treescapes for the long run. 
“We noticed how a lot individuals 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 challenge. 
Via storytelling, workshops, and neighborhood engagement, individuals shared recollections and imagined greener futures. However translating these desires into motion proved tougher. “What if individuals may ‘develop’ a treescape in only a few hours and get their fingers 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 current 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 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 timber in an city surroundings throughout completely different seasons and over time,” says Joanne. “They face choices akin to the place to plant new timber, tips on how to maintain them alive and tips on how 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 Put up-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 probably minimize down.  
 
Photo: Joanne Morris / SEI
On the coronary heart of the sport is a robust studying message: the thought of the precise tree, in the precise place. “With an entire metropolis to play with, you don’t have to fulfill all people’s expectations of timber in a single spot,” explains Joanne. “The sport reveals that strategic planting throughout completely different areas can create a greater, extra resilient treescape general.” As a substitute of utilizing conventional foreign money, the sport introduces different important sources akin to time, neighborhood 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, changing into medium or massive by Yr 5, giving gamers a way of time and influence. Playtests revealed that even with simplified guidelines, gamers introduced their questions and information to the sport, typically weaving in private tales and native issues. 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, neighborhood centres, or use in planning periods in each private and non-private areas. Others agreed it will be device 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 would possibly use the sport? What are they taking away from it? Can the sport be tailored for faculties with lesson plans? May 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 challenge 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 challenge.
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