La Crescenta is Getting Hotter – Let’s Plant Trees

Growing up, I didn’t know any kids who loved blacktop. Grass meant you could fall and get up; asphalt meant you fell and got all scraped up. Grass was cool underfoot on a June morning; asphalt was already radiating by 9 a.m. I don’t remember ever choosing to sit on the blacktop when there was a patch of lawn nearby. Nobody did. 

And yet, decades later, that’s mostly what we’re still asking our kids to play on.

Walk the elementary school campuses in La Crescenta at midday (when not on summer break!). You’ll find good teachers, dedicated staff and communities that genuinely care about these kids. You’ll also find a lot of asphalt. Black, flat, heat-absorbing expanses that were probably just called “the yard” when they were built and never questioned much since.

The questioning, though, is now overdue, particularly in this last unseasonably warm winter. A tool from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science called Future Urban Climates lets you look up any city and find out where it’s headed, climatically speaking. Punch in, La Crescenta. The answer is sobering: under current emissions trajectories, we can expect our foothills to feel, by mid-century, roughly the way Rialto, way out by Riverside, feels today – and the projections extend to 2080, by which point the gap widens further.

Rialto is not Siberia. But it is meaningfully, materially hotter than La Crescenta and the difference matters most during the few hours when kids are outside at school, parents are waiting in pickup lines and coaches are running practice under a bleaching sky. So here is a simple question: Why are our elementary schools still almost entirely paved?

Asphalt is cheap, low-maintenance and easy to sweep. When these schoolyards were laid, the climate looked different and the science on urban heat islands was not what it is today. The ARLA (Arroyo Regional Land Arboretum) Depaving LA study documents just how much impervious surface blankets the LA region and how much of it sits on school grounds that could, with investment and imagination, be something else entirely.

Replace asphalt with permeable surfaces, bioswales and native plantings, and something else happens too: rain soaks into the ground instead of running off into the storm drain. That water recharges the local groundwater basin. And groundwater is not an abstraction in the foothills – it’s a direct substitute for the expensive imported water our community already pays for every month. Every acre of schoolyard that captures rain instead of sheds it is, over time, a water supply investment as much as a parks investment.

Our community already pays for this. Measure W – the Safe Clean Water Program – passed in 2018 and it funds exactly the kind of permeable surface and green infrastructure work that turns school blacktops into living, water-capturing landscapes. The County collects Measure W dollars from every resident making a purchase. That money is meant to come back as projects that benefit our neighborhoods. There is no good reason why La Crescenta should not have green schoolyards, shaded campuses and recharged groundwater to show for it.

The whole community could benefit. Drive through parts of Spain or Turkey and you see wide sidewalks flanked by trees heavy with fruit. Orange trees on public plazas that anyone can pick. Citrus planted not just for ornament but for shade, for sustenance, for the simple pleasure of a neighborhood that smells good in the morning. Seville is famous for its bitter oranges; Istanbul’s older neighborhoods have fig trees shading courtyard walls; Valencia has streets where the trees are a kind of public pantry. These aren’t cities that are richer than ours or have more land – they just made a different choice about what public space is for.

La Crescenta, for its part, has some lovely trees. But drive Foothill Boulevard and compare what you see to what that street might hold. We have the climate for citrus, for jacarandas, for sycamores and native oaks. What we mostly have instead is concrete curb and pavement shoulder and a few sparse trees and shrubs. Plus, increasingly, a few bike lanes.

I understand the maintenance concerns. Roots and sidewalks are not natural allies. The liability imaginations of municipal attorneys are vivid and well-exercised. None of that is a reason not to plant trees. It’s a reason to plant the right trees, in the right places, with the right infrastructure around them.

Trees take time. An oak planted in a schoolyard today will cast meaningful shade in 10 or 15 years. An orange tree on Foothill Boulevard, given decent water and care, might fruit in three to five. We are not talking about quick wins. We are talking about the long game – which is exactly the timeframe that a community with young children should be comfortable with.

La Crescenta in 2080 will still be a beautiful place. We have geography on our side and a community that takes care of what it has. But beautiful and hot is a harder combination than beautiful and shaded. The kids who will be grown and living here in 2080 are in kindergarten right now, running around that blacktop, squinting at the sun.

We have time. But trees don’t plant themselves. Ensuring a bright future means preparing today.

Patrick’s a husband, father, son, brother, avid cyclist, fervent reader, enjoyer of adventures, lover of board games, the author of “A New California Dream” and blogs at PioneeringSpirit.xyz. He writes for CV Weekly in his personal capacity.