Park district plants a thousand trees along the river path
A canopy budget that will pay off in 20 years.
Practical effects are already visible on the ground, and they tend to outrun the official analysis by a comfortable margin.
The decision-makers involved insist nothing is settled, which is exactly what decision-makers say when something is starting to settle.
Expect the next chapter to be quieter than this one, and more consequential. The loud part is usually the prologue.
The shift did not happen overnight. It accumulated in quiet decisions, small wins, and a handful of unglamorous fixes that no one tweeted about.
Critics raise familiar objections, and some of them land. The honest answer is that the tradeoffs are real and worth naming.
A small group of practitioners has been arguing for this approach for years. They are doing their best not to look smug.
