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There goes the neighbourhood
20/03/2008 12:24 - (SA)
Georgina Guedes
The father of a woman I used to work with once cut down a tree in his garden because he was tired of having to rake up the leaves that fell.
This, to me, is missing the essential point of a tree. Sure, he had to clean up after it when it messed on the lawn, but the same provoking leaves, when still attached to the branches, provided attractive shade from the harsh South African sun.
Birds lived in the tree. Aesthetically, it was attractive, sheltering him from a view of his neighbour's washing line. But to avoid ten minutes of raking a day, he hacked the thing down.
Crime, grime and... trees
Johannesburg is not the world's prettiest city. There are nice bits, but in general, it has no mountain, no riverfront, certainly no sea, and its series of ridges jut out like brown waves on a dirty ocean.
What it does have is beautiful trees. Granted, a lot of them aren't indigenous, but the natural vegetation of the area is grassland with the occasional scrubby bush. Since we're going to have trees, we might as well have good ones.
Whether Johannesburg is the most-treed city in the word, as is often bandied about (with the exception of Munich, which is built around a forest) I am not sure of. I do know that according to air survey maps, the frequency of our trees means that we are not actually living in a city, but in the world's most highly populated forest.
Green, as far as the eye can see
Just look out over Parktown from the M1 highway, and you'll see a mass of green foliage, with the occasional starburst of purple jacaranda, and every so often, the corner of a roof peeping out from among the trees. Johannesburg can be beautiful, from her good side.
Why is it, then, that when developers put up new town house complexes, the first thing that they do is hack down all the beautiful trees?
Isn't the reason that people want to move to areas like "The Parks" because they are more attractive than the concrete sprawl of Sandton? Part of that attractiveness must have something to do with the leafy green suburbs, surely?
Or is there something inherent in the area, in the way the ground undulates perhaps, that tree haters like my colleague's father are drawn to, as long as they can gouge out anything that's living?
The benefits of shade
Trees are lovely things, even in townhouse developments. One of the nicest apartments I've ever been in was on the second floor of a Killarney block of flats, just at the level where the trees outside branched out into leafy spleandour. It felt like living in a tree house.
The second-storeys of new townhouses are invariably sun-drenched and air-conditioning has to be switched on to survive an afternoon in bed. Wouldn't these developments be so much nicer if they fell under dappled shade, rather than being dotted about with scraggly palms?
And you can't tell me it's impossible to drive a bulldozer around a tree.
We are at risk of denuding a beautiful aspect of our city by continuing to rip up our trees, and rezoning our parks for high-density developments.
Georgina Guedes is a freelance journalist. She is sure that the original intention of much of the high-density rezoning of Johannesburg was to provide housing closer to the city centre for poor people. Townhouses selling at R4m a pop, can't be what government had in mind.
Send your comments to Georgina.
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