Street Trees, Finding their place in the urban landscape

Abstract

Bundaberg Regional Council (BRC) in partnership with AECOM recently undertook a review of BRC’s street tree standard drawings for planting trees in road reserves. The review sought to harmonise internal and external stakeholder needs while updating the standard drawings to reflect current industry best practice. The process was driven by competing interests and confusion when applying the previous standard drawings. To address concerns from internal asset owners and external developers AECOM were engaged to provide an independent external peer review and to facilitate collaborative workshops with key stakeholders within Council. The process commenced in May 2020 and was finalised in January 2021. During this period a moratorium was placed on street trees being planted in road reserves. The review was multi-disciplinary and involved the following disciplines: - Landscape Architect - Civil Engineer - Environmental Scientist - Arborist And the following stakeholders from Council: - Engineering Services - Parks, Sport and Natural Areas - Development Assessment - Strategic Planning - Civil Works - Water Services - Major Projects The collaborative process highlighted the competing interests for all stakeholders in the road reserve space and sparked strong debate with a lot of passionate views on trees. In principle all parties supported quality trees in our urban neighbourhoods however how BRC went about this has proven challenging. We are now in the implementation stage of the new drawings and we will review them again after 12 months to measure their performance. There were two main sticking points during the review, these being: - Optimal size of the planting area and soil volumes for a tree; and - Finding space to install trees. The Queensland State Government developed the ‘Model Code for Neighbourhood Design’ to help local government address aspects of the liveable communities state interest of the State Planning Policy 2017. The model code sets a benchmark of at least one street tree to be provided per 15m on each side of all streets. IPWEA with the help of the industry developed the ‘Street Design Manual – Walkable Neighbourhoods’ to complement the objectives of the model code. The document talks about road reserve widths, truncations and road width treatments to help create spaces for significant trees to be planted or retained. The document is a great tool, however there are further issues that are encountered in brownfield sites where BRC are undertaking street tree planting as part of the ‘One Million Trees Bundaberg Region’ project. This paper looks at the journey BRC undertook to develop the new suite of standard street tree standard drawings. In particular, engineering aspects of planting trees in the road reserve, the judgements and risk analyses that were undertaken to arrive at a decision matrix to guide street tree planting.