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What's big, green, and disappearing? In many communities the answer is trees. New development, old age, careless cutting, gypsy moths, utility companies, highway departments, and other culprits are all combining to slowly strip our communities of trees.

For the most part people care about trees. As a result, tree preservation and planting have become hot issues in communities across the U.S. and Canada. Hundreds of places, both big and small, have established urban greening and street tree planting programs. For example, Lakeland, Florida, has been planting over one thousand trees per year since 1990. A Houston, Texas, based nonprofit, "Trees for Houston," has used private donations and corporate funding to plant tens of thousands of street trees throughout the sprawling city. Dozens of other big cities have done the same. Likewise the National Arbor Day Foundation and American Forest's "Global ReLeaf" program have helped hundreds of small towns start tree planting programs.

While the simple act of planting trees can have a profound long-range impact on a community and its inhabitants, until relatively recently the idea of protecting existing trees through local tree preservation ordinances was rare. As recently as 1984, the University of Pennsylvania could identify only one hundred communities nationwide with tree protection laws. But today, tree protection ordinances are sprouting up all over the country. In California and Florida alone almost two hundred communities now have city tree ordinances. Nor are they confined to big urban states. New laws can now be found in virtually every state from Mississippi to Missouri.

As you might expect, ordinances mandating landscaping and requiring the protection of existing trees and woodlands have provoked protests from the business community in many places. Now, however, a growing number of homebuilders, developers, and other businesses are embracing landscaping and tree protection measures because they realize protecting trees makes economic sense.

Two new publications, one by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the other by the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB), make clear just how valuable trees and landscaping can be.

In 1991, the ULI, in cooperation with the American Society of Landscape Architects, examined eleven real estate developments to assess whether money spent on site planning, landscaping, and preservation of mature trees justified the added cost of development. What they found was that landscaping and greenspace increased profits for developers while providing numerous other benefits to both the user and the community. Specifically, greenspace and landscaping translated into increased financial returns of 5 to 15 percent depending on the type of project. Landscaping also gave developers a competitive edge and increased the rate of project absorption.

Likewise, -- Building Greener Neighbors, a new publication by the NAHB, demonstrates how builders and developers can save money, generate sales, and enhance their prestige in the community by creating tree preservation plans. The report points out that "lots with trees sell for an average of 20 to 30 percent more than similarly sized lots without trees," and that "mature trees that are saved during development add more value to a lot than post construction landscaping."

Reinforcing these findings is a 1995 survey conducted for a group of the nation's largest volume homebuilders by American Lives, a San Francisco-based firm. Pollster Brook Warrick says that the results show that "consumers are putting an increasingly high premium on interaction with the outdoor environment through the inclusion of wooded tracts, nature paths, and even wilderness areas in housing developments." In fact, 77 percent of consumers put "natural open space" as the feature they desired most in a new home development.

These and other studies make one thing abundantly clear: trees are not frills or cosmetic add-ons. They are basic infrastructure and a major factor in contributing to community pride, quality of life, and economic development. Street trees, for example, are important not just because they absorb noise and air pollution, lower utility costs, and provide a habitat for birds and other wildlife, but because the roadway and its frontages are a community's major public arena or ordering device. Trees growing along a street visually tie a neighborhood or a development together and make it a unit. This is why Southern Living Magazine says that "for America's relatively low density communities, trees and landscaping will do more than buildings to make a great urban presence."

American communities need aggressive tree planting programs as well as comprehensive programs to protect existing trees and to mandate landscaping of commercial areas and parking lots. While mandating anything in today's political climate is likely to encounter some resistance, passing tree protection and landscaping ordinances may not be as hard as it once was. This is because more and more builders and developers are recognizing that trees not only make our communities more livable, but also make their developments more valuable.