NYC officials are planning the unveiling of a new 'urban forest' by 2040

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New York City is about to get a whole lot leafier.

City officials have rolled out an ambitious new “urban forest” plan that aims to boost tree canopy coverage to 30% by 2040, a jump of nearly 10 percentage points from today’s levels. Right now, trees shade just under a quarter of the city but the goal is to turn that into a much more comprehensive green network stretching across all five boroughs.

Before you picture a literal forest popping up in Times Square, here’s what it actually means: this “urban forest” includes every tree in the city—street trees, park trees, backyard oaks, schoolyard saplings and even the ones tucked into NYCHA campuses. Altogether, that’s already nearly 7 million trees acting as the city’s unofficial cooling system.

The additions come at a time when New York is heating up fast. Officials say trees are one of the simplest (and cheapest) ways to cool things down, absorb stormwater and clean the air, all while making neighborhoods more livable. (The plan even calls trees “essential living infrastructure,” putting them in the same category as roads and sewers.)

Getting there, though, is no small feat. The city estimates it will need to add roughly 700 acres of canopy every year—equivalent to planting the size of about 5,100 fully forested city blocks by 2040.

And this isn’t just about planting more trees wherever there’s space. A major focus is equity. Some neighborhoods, especially in parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, have dramatically less tree cover than others, sometimes dipping below 10%. The plan aims to prioritize those areas first, targeting communities that currently get the least shade and often the most heat.

To pull it off, the city is taking a three-pronged approach: protecting the trees that already exist (since most canopy growth comes from mature trees getting bigger), planting new ones in both public and private spaces and getting more New Yorkers involved in caring for them. If it works, the payoff could be huge—cooler streets, cleaner air, fewer flooded sidewalks and a city that feels just a little less like a concrete oven in August. Not bad for something that starts with a sapling.

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