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19 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol'y F. 81 (2008-2009)
"Everybody Loves Trees": Policing American Cities through Street Trees

handle is hein.journals/delp19 and id is 83 raw text is: EVERYBODY LOVES TREES: POLICING
AMERICAN CITIES THROUGH STREET TREES
IRUS BRAVERMANt
ABSTRACT
Recently, municipalities have been investing large sums of money,
as well as much bureaucratic and professional effort, into making their
cities not only more treefull places, but also places that survey,
measure, regulate, and manage their trees. This article explores the
transformation of the utilitarian discourse on trees, which focuses on
the benefits of trees and greenery, into a normative discourse whereby
trees are not only considered good but are also represented as if they
are, or should be, loved by everybody. This transformation is not only
the result of top-down governmental policies. It is also a consequence
of longstanding romantic views of nature in the city-especially in the
American    city-facilitated  by   environmental organizations, local
communities, and individual activists. Importantly, the attribution of
morality to tree practices masks the clandestine project of governing the
urban population, and the governmental control of urban crime in
particular.
t Irus Braverman is Associate Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo, State
University of New York. She is the author of Powers of Illegality: House Demolitions and
Resistance in East Jerusalem (Tel Aviv: The Tami Steinmetz Ctr. for Peace 2004) and PLANTED
FLAGS: TREES, LAND, AND LAW IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE (Cambridge Univ. Press forthcoming
2009), as well as various articles, such as Planting the Promised Landscape, NATURAL RES. J.
(forthcoming 2009); Loo Law: The Public Washroom as a Hyper-Regulated Space, 20 HASTINGS
WOMEN'S L.J. 45 (2008); and The Tree is the Enemy Soldier: A Sociolegal Making of War
Landscapes in the Occupied West Bank, 42 LAW & Soc'Y REV. 449 (2008). She was previously
affiliated with the Humanities Center at Harvard University, the Human Rights Program at
Harvard Law School, the Center of Criminology at the University of Toronto, and the
Geography Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on the
interdisciplinary study of law, geography, and anthropology.

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