Event Description:
Today, cities around the globe are planting street trees to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, as landscape historian Sonja Dümpelmann explains, this is not a new phenomenon. In her new book, Seeing Trees: A History of Street Trees in New York City and Berlin, Dümpelmann shows how New York City and Berlin began systematically planting trees to improve the urban climate during the 19th century, presenting the history of the practice within its larger social, cultural, and political contexts. Street trees—variously regarded as sanitizers, nuisances, upholders of virtue, economic engines, habitat, and more—reflect the changing relationship between humans and nonhuman nature in urban environments.
Event Speaker:
Sonja Dümpelmann is a landscape historian and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Her work focuses on 19th- and 20th-century urban landscape history in the Western world and the intersections of landscape, science, technology, and the environment.
Event Information:
More information on RSVP and where to enter the garden is available on New York Botanical Garden's website.
