Trees

Requesting trees to be planted through Chicago’s 311 service is a hobby of mine. I’ve used Google Street View to find parkway spaces in need of a tree and fire off a request. Part brag, part confession: I’ve made thousands of them. It’s slow going, but mindless and easy at the end of the day.

Recently I put together a tool to speed this up significantly. I had Claude develop a program that performs a first pass of potential sites and rules out obvious duds. It can’t reliably judge the rest, so it shows me each remaining spot for a quick yes or no. I’m working through the whole city ward by ward: 23 of the 50 wards are done so far, with just under 16,000 requests queued up. Once the list is complete, the tool will submit them to 311.

Compiling the requests before submitting allows me to develop a comprehensive plan of the types of trees requested. Currently, you can include a suggestion for the type of tree from a list provided by Streets and San. By compiling ahead of time, I’ll be able to produce a plan that meets the city’s diversity targets, restores dwindling oak numbers, provides fast-growing shade in the hottest neighborhoods, and efficiently filters particulates for residential areas near the freeway.

Of course, just because I make the requests doesn’t mean a tree gets planted. The owners of the adjacent property get to weigh in and it can take time for Streets and San to get to each one. But the results so far are encouraging. The maps below show the tree requests and plantings from the last 2 years of piecemealing it.