City Trees

point is that these are structural. Where year after year the tree grows new limbs and narratives, the existing ones do not disappear, they become part of the larger process and growth structure. Branches are interconnected and woven. The connections are messy at first glance, but have a chaotic order that offers necessary structure and function for an ever-expanding canopy to provide new ways of seeing and knowing broader narratives. I have presented the dominant limbs in this model (Figure 1) using the narratives that emerged from my doctoral inter- views (e.g. Language, Labour, Agency, Learning/Education), and I have presented the smaller branches as consider- ations within these larger narratives (e.g. Identity, Leverage, Power, Management, Accountability, Human, Non-human, Health, Communication, Technologies, Community), but to be clear, there are countless possibilities. In addition, the smaller branches that represent subjugated and/or alterna- tive narratives that are shown as offshoots of larger limbs are universal to all the dominant narratives. For example, Leverage and Identity, though presented with Language, are also relevant to the broader Labour narrative/limb. Leaves The leaves are the individual, personal stories, experi- ences, actions, and activities of people, workers, and residents that make up urban forest communities (Figure 1). The leaves represent a child's first exposure to trees that left an impression, a community's ties to a heritage tree, a climber's love of the canopy, or a new immigrant's experience with unfamiliar species. The leaves here con- stitute the drivers of those intimate stories that change and grow in both numbers and density from year to year; these stories are countless, and are driven by emotions and constructs, as illustrated by the person-shaped leaves. To further this metaphor: in autumn, leaves fall and are col- lected, and new leaves will emerge the following year. This collection process can be applied to stories represented nationally, regionally, and locally, and that comprise what we call natural heritage. It is my position that these narratives are the essence of urban forest (social) memory and thus should be told and re-told. These stories also offer count- er-narratives (i.e. opposing perspectives of a similar issue), as my interviews revealed. It is these counter-narratives of lived experience that offer windows into diverse perspec- tives, where opportunities for further research are possible. The green arrows and dotted lines (analogous to phloem that transports photosynthates to the rest of the tree) travel through the tree, showing that the stories of lived experience inform the dominant narratives and affect the process and then, in turn, can affect the perceptions Figure 2. Conceptual framework for urban forestry—stem. Source: Bardekjian, 2015. Artwork: Brauner, 2014. 22 CityTREES

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