This paper examines the evolving values attributed to trees and green spaces in northeastern U.S. cities. Historically framed as antagonists in land use change, cities are sites of forest histories long overlooked by forest transition theory. Urban forests are now recognised as key agents in land change, blurring urban – rural divides. Rather than treating them as isolated features, we trace how their distribution, management, composition, structure, and symbolic significance have been shaped by racialized land use, governance, and evolving cultural ideals – including rural aesthetic norms. By centreing the biocultural histories of trees and the contested terrains of urban environmentalism, this paper reveals how greening initiatives often reflect – and sometimes reproduce – the contradictions of racial capitalist urbanisation. Our analysis begins with rural forest transitions and nineteenth-century greening efforts, then explores how socio-environmental disparities unfolded across the twentieth century and have been transmuted into contemporary initiatives in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Drawing on historical documents and scholarship in urban political ecology and environmental justice, we illustrate how ecological, aesthetic, and symbolic meanings are embedded in environmental discourses shaped by racialized histories of land use and value. Forest transitions are thus not only ecological but cultural and political processes that negotiate power, identity, and belonging. We call for urban forest initiatives that prioritise community agency and equity, challenging exclusionary legacies and advancing more inclusive frameworks for urban greening.
Jovanelly et al. (Wed,) studied this question.