Government
CityLab Daily: Why Detroiters Didn’t Trust the City’s Free Trees
Also: The ‘Childless City’ is mostly a myth, and the shutdown could delay key tax refunds.
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Seeds of dissent: In 2014, a local environmental nonprofit called The Greening of Detroit partnered with the city to take on an ambitious task: reforesting the city by planting an additional 1,000 to 5,000 new trees per year. But volunteers met stiff resistance. Roughly a quarter of the 7,500 residents they approached declined offers to have new trees planted in front of their homes. That seemed strange, so University of Vermont researcher Christine E. Carmichael went to ask the people who had turned TGD down. She found out she was the first person to ask residents if they wanted the trees in the first place.