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Managing trees is not as simple as replacing old and rotting trees, Speed said.

Take, for example, the chestnut trees along Cook Street, many of which are 70 or 80 years old and nearing the end of their lives. "People are pretty attached to them, so cutting them down is a pretty challenging thing for residents and for the businesses there," Speed said.

The trees are also difficult to remove and affect infrastructure such as water, gas and sewer lines. Then there's the question of what to plant in their place.

But the chestnuts have to be dealt with. During last winter's severe windstorms, three came down -- one taking out the side of an apartment building.

Coun. Chris Coleman hopes work now being undertaken will result in a funding strategy for tree replacement.

He notes the city is responsible for about 40,000 trees, about half of which are boulevard trees.

"Two thousand of those at the moment are holes," and need to be replaced, Coleman said. More important, however, is developing a series of succession plans for the long term, he said. "A lot of the trees we have were planted in a short period of time. They then all grow up and they all start dying."

- Balancing urban development with tree conservation.

- Protecting significant treed areas and increasing biodiversity.

- Creating strategies for communities to best influence the treed character of their neighbourhoods.

- Determining if the city should be planting more trees and if so, where and what kind.

- Minimizing negative impacts of existing and new trees.

- Planning for the effects of climate change on the urban forest.

As we know from painful experience, the notion that there exists a topology of rationality and certainty no longer holds. Instead, we should be talking about the landscape as a stage that enables an endless variety of activity.

The new landscapists will need to adopt a more opportunistic approach, taking advantage of the unexpected.