Not often do we think of trees when you think of the urban landscapes filled with concrete in New York City or Berlin, unless more recently in the past decade with the Highline revitalization or Central Park. Street trees—variously regarded as sanitizers and sometimes nuisances reflect the changing relationship between humans and nonhuman nature in urban environments.

This book by Sonja Dümpelmann, a landscape historian and professor and chair of Environmental Humanities at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, specializes in topics such as the relationships between architecture and landscape, theory and practice.

Here you will find the untold story of trees and the changing relationship with humans, nature and cities. If you think about it, what would these cities be like without trees? The planting of streets trees certainly was not seen as an obligation, yet a way to care for its citizens and vice versa.