The Politics of Street Trees

Jan Woudstra, Camilla Allen, Jan Woudstra, Camilla Allen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000556520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This book focuses on the politics of street trees and the institutions, actors and processes that govern their planning, planting and maintenance. This is an innovative approach which is particularly important in the context of mounting environmental and societal challenges and reveals a huge amount about the nature of modern life, social change and political conflict.

The work first provides different historical perspectives on street trees and politics, celebrating diversity in different cultures. A second section discusses street tree values, policy and management, addressing more contemporary issues of their significance and contribution to our environment, both physically and philosophically. It explores cultural idiosyncrasies and those from the point of view of political economy, particularly challenging the neo-liberal perspectives that continue to dominate political narratives. The final section provides case studies of community engagement, civil action and governance. International case studies bring together contrasting approaches in areas with diverging political directions or intentions, the constraints of laws and the importance of people power.

By pursuing an interdisciplinary approach this book produces an information base for academics, practitioners, politicians and activists alike, thus contributing to a fairer political debate that helps to promote more democratic environments that are sustainable, equitable, comfortable and healthier.

Part 1 Historic perspectives on street trees and politics

1 The ‘Right to Plant’ Roadside tree planting in the Netherlands

Jan Woudstra

DOI: 10.4324/9781003054672-3

On visiting the Netherlands, foreigners often remarked on the beautiful avenues of trees they saw everywhere, along quaysides and canals, in gardens, around squares and on ramparts, and along the roads in new polders, cities, villages and the countryside. On seeing these in the Keizersgracht, Amsterdam in 1641, the English visitor John Evelyn even declared it a ‘city in a wood’.¹ While this may not have been the intention of those who created it, this provides a powerful evocation that has continued to be reiterated by other visitors, by painters and indeed by academics. A recent authority refers to urban tree planting in the Netherlands as being ‘unprecedented,’ with The Hague celebrated as ‘the most compelling example of a green town… in the sixteenth century.’² While the evidence of abundant tree planting has been variously documented, the political context of why this occurred here has been investigated insufficiently. This chapter therefore explores the processes and agency that enabled this to happen, using the ancient city of Utrecht and the Meijerij, the area to the south in Brabant, as a way to frame the narrative since both have been well documented for different reasons, but show the typical issues.

Evelyn saw trees in cities as contributing ‘to the publick Ornament, as well as convenience.’³ Sir William Temple, the English ambassador at the Hague in 1668, had profound observations on the impact of trees for the ‘Adornment of Towns’ more generally, stating how they contributed to a setting that encouraged people from other nations, ‘whose very Passage and Intercourse is a great Increase of Wealth and of Trade, and a secret Incentive of People to inhabit a Country, where Men may meet equal Advantages, and more Entertainments of Life, than in other Places.’⁴ It is clear that not only the physical nature of trees in the urban context was admired but also how they helped improve socio-economic conditions.

Some political background

Until the Napoleonic period, the Netherlands consisted of a series of regions each with its own rules and customs. These had their roots in the various waves of peoples that occupied or conquered the area. The Carolingian dynasty introduced the feudal system in which landholders provided land to tenants in exchange for their loyalty and service, effectively creating dependency by providing rights, not ownership. The exchange was largely in produce. The population started to expand in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with further land being brought into cultivation including the grand reclamations of the marshes of Holland and Utrecht, and also the slightly elevated heathlands to east and south, where it affected various common rights, such as driving sheep, grazing for pigs and cattle, turfing and extracting firewood.⁵ It also encouraged trade and industry and the expansion of cities, thereby forming an important counterweight to diminish the power of nobility and church resulting in the feudal system being gradually dismantled. This ultimately benefited the sovereign lords and the formation of regions, each with its own rules and customs. The lack of competition among regions ensured a period of welfare and profound artistic culture.⁶ By 1433 the Duke of Burgundy had assumed control of an area that stretched from the Netherlands to northern France and Luxemburg. In 1482 the Burgundian Netherlands became part of the Habsburg empire through marriage, and from 1543 it was incorporated in the Seventeen Provinces.⁷

After the abdication of Charles V in 1555 his less tolerant son Philips II governed in an authoritarian manner which ultimately led to the Eighty Year War (1568–1648). The Union of Utrecht in 1579 in which a number of regions agreed to dispose of the Spanish and jointly organise the state of defence, taxes and religion was followed in 1581 by a declaration of independence in which the northern provinces were separated from the southern Netherlands. In 1795 the French Republic occupied the northern Netherlands, creating the Batavian Republic; making it part of the French Empire in 1810; and after the 1813 departure of the Napoleonic army, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands was created, with the north and south being united in 1815. The Belgian revolt of 1830 led in 1839 to the creation of the Kingdom of the Netherlands more or less in its present form. This tumultuous period was of importance because instead of a series of independent regions with each their own governance and form of government it established both a constitution and used the French Civil Code as a model for the Dutch Burgerlijk Wetboek. This proved of lasting significance that has not only affected the legal language but also the relationship with property, including trees.

Regt van voorpoting/The right to plant ‘in front’

By the time of the Burgundian dominance over the Netherlands, tenants had acquired various established rights, with distinctive traditions developing in different regions responding to the physical context. The higher sand ridges to the south and east saw different development patterns than the north and west that were low lying and prone to flooding. This lowland had been protected by dykes, raised embankments, since ancient times, of which maintenance was the responsibility of the respective landowners for their part; they were verhoefslaagd.⁸ This system of shared responsibility also opened up opportunities for land reclamation of moors and wetlands by joint ventures.

The right to plant predated the Burgundian era and provided the right to plant trees along the highway bordering one’s property and involved the obligation to manage and maintain them. There were two versions; the regt van voorpoting, on verges adjoining, and regt van overpoting, on the verges on either side of the adjoining road, the oldest surviving right dating back to 1310.⁹ Mid-sixteenth-century illustrations celebrating rural landscapes reveal how common this was, with highly limbed up (‘shredded’ in English) standard trees and pollards shown along roads in villages, near farms and beside fields.¹⁰ It was an everyman’s right to plant these trees on land belonging to the gemeynte, and verges along roads were considered common land.¹¹

Though there had been Roman roads south of the Limes, and there were local ones, the main mode of transport in the Rhine delta area was across a system of natural and improved waterways, augmented substantially by a network of canals constructed between 1632 and 1665 built for the barge, with towpaths.¹² Roads served local transport, and until the French occupation in the early nineteenth century, there were no national roads, though from the late seventeenth century there were ‘Hessen’ roads, trade routes from northern Germany to Utrecht. The latter avoided villages and used larger carts with a wider span for heavier loads than allowed in the provinces.¹³

While this was a common right there were restrictions, particularly in the lower parts of the country, where roads were often on dikes, and as defences against water these required special care. In Nijendijk for example, no pollarded willows or standard trees on the sun side were allowed since that prohibited the road from drying out. Additionally, there was a requirement to ensure that overhanging branches of trees and hedges were shredded so as to provide a clear passage to carts loaded with hay or corn.¹⁴ The river board of the Lek (branch of the Rhine) prohibited planting on banks of dikes or at the foot of these, which would have been because once the plants had died or been cut down, the dead roots would have damaged the integrity of their structure.¹⁵ In other instances, consent from the authorities was required.¹⁶ Sometimes variations on general customs applied; so instead of shredding trees to 14 feet, only 12 feet was necessary and young standard trees up to 8 feet.¹⁷

The so-called wilderness right, allocated by the emperor around 1000, provided nobility with the right to reclaim wasteland. For example, on the higher grounds of the Meijerij region of Brabant, the Dukes of Brabant had the rights to wasteland, classified as common land. Exploitation of these areas enabled the raising of taxes, which was done by means of charters for the various villages. These charters were referred to as pootkaart, plant chart, and could be acquired by means of payment upfront, or through an annual tax. This enabled the resident to plant a specified area along the road, normally for a row of trees, but at times wider strips were allocated, up to 80 feet from the side of the road. In addition, tenants had to either provide a houtschat, timber treasure or tax, when trees were harvested. With the oldest charters dating back to 1396, and the latest surviving ones dating back to the second half of the eighteenth century, this remained a popular charter. However as it provided legal rights in perpetuity it was often challenged, not only by the tenants but also the landlords, particularly the later local authorities. By the end of the seventeenth century, in 1696, the States-General required the planting of trees along roads as a duty of the landowner.¹⁸ It is clear that the benefits of tree planting were generally understood and there was an urgency to provide timber and firewood.

This was similarly so in the province of Zeeland. One of the main trades between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries there was the extraction of salt from peat which had been formed 10,000 years earlier. This meant a lowering of ground level and this ultimately caused the land to become vulnerable to flooding, and indeed it was often blamed for the St Elizabeth flood of 1421. There were various attempts to prohibit the practice, but it was not till 1515 that Charles V compensated the inhabitants of the area for the loss of their fuel with the right to plant along roads and their yards, giving them the benefit of the wood instead, that the practice ceased.¹⁹ The avenue at Middelharnis, Zeeland, painted by Meindert Hobbe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Foreword
• The Street Tree Replacement Programme
• Introduction
• Part 1 Historic perspectives on street trees and politics
• Part 2 Street tree values, policy and management
• Part 3 Community engagement, civic action and governance
• Conclusions
• Select Bibliography
• Index