The research question is “How would acknowledging trees as legal persons impact their integration into London urban design?”  But what does this mean? Legal personality can apply to anything that is able to hold legal rights and duties (humans, companies, non-human entities), which provides the ability to enter contracts, sue or be sued, and own property. If this is applied to trees, they must have a legitimate institution to represent their interests in court, in which the trees’ representative can make a legal claim in response to a wrongdoing or violation of a legal right. This establishes trees as right-holders, meaning, in this context, urban designers/architects have a legal obligation to uphold and prevent violations of the trees' rights.

My aim is to explore whether this radical measure will allow for trees to be seen as their own beings, with needs, rights and interests. In order to further perpetuate their role in urban design as active stakeholders, rather than passive ‘service’ structures.

How assigning legal personality to trees impacts their integration into urban design is an open question, what are the potential challenges? Benefits? Recommendations?

My project started with the broad problem area of ‘What would be the societal implications if plants, fungi and animals received equal standing legal and natural rights as humans?’ I wanted to explore the complexities and factors involved in making other natural entities legal and moral equals to us, how our current societal structure would react if this change was instigated. Thus I narrowed the problem area down to a societal institution, urban design, and one natural entity, trees.

In order to investigate further, I chose cultural probes and data arrangement for my research methods. Cultural probes act as a tool to understand the everyday challenges, goals and needs of participants, gaining their perspective on how the problem area affects their everyday or professional lives. The probes can be in the form of diary entries, photographs, drawings, etc. I decided to design my own cultural probes and send them to urban designers and architects based in London, to gain a professional perspective on the benefits and challenges this legal change could inspire for them.

Secondly, data arrangement will allow me to combine varying datasets on tree health from cities that have established initiatives permitting trees as active stakeholders. The datasets will highlight tree health before and after the initiatives were put in place, this is to test for a statistical significance and potential change in health. This will entail whether the initiatives were effective in concerning trees needs and interests into urban design.

Both Law and Urban Design are the pinnacles of my project, the ultimate aim is to find a bridge between the two to act in favour of supporting the interests of trees in London. Law acted as a guide to comprehend what legal forces would be the most effective in recognising trees as their own beings that should be incorporated as active stakeholders, one that illuminates all the ifs and buts. Urban Design provided an insight into the thinking of urban designers and architects, the constrictions and wrongdoings trees currently face in the urban world, and the current design frameworks that hold the prosperity of other natural entities at its centre, e.g, Biodiversity Centred Design (BID).

My product will be a video explainer of ‘The Declaration of Urban Tree Rughts’. The bridge between Law and Urban Design will reside within the integration of urban rules, spacial guidelines for design, and legal rights, outlining which needs and interests of trees should be respected by law. The ‘Rughts’ (pronounced roots), a hybrid of rights and rules stemmed from the conclusions:

- If trees received legal personality and rights urban design professionals would be legally obliged to incorporate trees into design. No need to wait for a cultural shift in perception.

- However, for the integration of trees to truly work, the tree cannot be the centre of the design. This means urban design can create an urban ecosystem in which all species (including humans) can provide an interchange of services and benefits, rather than humans soaley extracting services from other natural entities.

If there is little to no data out there, try and create some yourself. I found it very difficult to find sufficient and relevant data to quantitatively analyse on such a niche subject. Beyond the final outcome, I am most proud of gaining an in-depth understanding of how legal personality can be applied effectively with Law theory.