Greening Sydney Strategy

We want our city to be a good place to live, work and visit.

Our vision is for a green Sydney that will improve people’s wellbeing, reduce urban temperatures and bring more nature into the city.

We can achieve a greener Sydney by planting more trees and encouraging others to do the same. This is part of our work to improve our city’s resilience, reduce the urban heat island effect and address the impacts of climate change.

In this story map, you can explore how we’re increasing canopy cover over time. It contains canopy cover, heat and other data acquired by the City of Sydney or other sources over the past 12 years.

Our target is for 40% of our local area to have green cover by 2050, including a minimum of 27% tree canopy.

Green infrastructure is a city’s natural life support system. There’s growing realisation, backed by a rapidly increasing body of research, that green infrastructure also sustains and enhances our health and well-being.  

Greening is all the vegetation measured including turf, trees, and rooftop vegetation. Tree canopy is any greening greater than 3m above ground.

Our greening and canopy is always changing

As our city develops over time, our urban forest is impacted by a range of factors that influence the amount of canopy cover within individual properties, streets and parks, and collectively over precincts and the entire city.  

The City of Sydney is one of a few local governments in Australia that has consistently increased canopy cover over time.  

Tree canopy cover is important for our physical and mental health.

Research has found that urban communities with a healthy amount of tree cover – not just grass and green space – were psychologically healthier than those that didn’t.

Cities create their own microclimates by influencing the surrounding atmosphere and interacting with climate processes.

Urban temperature extremes can present us with life or death situations. When temperatures exceed 25°C there is a reported increase in mortality and strokes. 

To reduce the impact of urban heat, research confirms we need tree canopy at both the local and precinct scale - ideally with a minimum of 30% canopy cover.

The thermal sliders below illustrate the impact canopy has on heat.

As our city continues to change and we head towards 2050, we have set ambitious targets to increase greening and canopy cover. The targets are presented as a summary of each property type or land use, and will help us monitor changes and progress over time. 

Since these overall targets are a summary they cannot be applied to any individual street, park or property. We will need to explore the potential and opportunity for greening and canopy cover on each individual site to achieve the overall targets.  

Importantly, each portfolio needs to deliver its share, as there is limited capacity for others to make up any difference. It is vital that all everyone works together to deliver the targets.

This story map contains canopy cover, heat and other data acquired by the City of Sydney or other sources over the past 12 years. During that time, like many other technologies, data acquisition and analysis has improved and been refined. We’ll continue to refine our processes over time.

We hope that visualising this data will help explain the important contribution of trees and other vegetation make to our urban environment, and explain our Greening Sydney Strategy and our targets to make our city cool, calm and resilient.