ABSTRACT
Walking through Milwaukee’s affluent Eastside, it is difficult to imagine that the presence of its well-maintained trees has been produced by anything but
decidedly local processes. However, it is more likely that the distribution of
these trees is influenced by, and influences, global socionatural processes
shaped through the edicts of neoliberal global capitalism. It is also likely that
the urban forests of thousands of other cities across the planet are produced
through correspondingly contradictory processes. One need travel only 20
blocks west from the Eastside to realize that Milwaukee’s ‘‘inner-city’’ con-
spicuously lacks the presence of mature and well-cared for trees. It is not their presence, but in stark contrast, their absence that provides the most
striking example of the impact of the neoliberalization of urban space on
something as seemingly obscure and mundane as the distribution of trees.
