North Campus Trees Are Gone

Submitted by GoBlueNorthside on

They cut down most of the trees on the North Campus diag, it's a very sad week.

Yo_Blue

May 19th, 2015 at 3:42 PM ^

They are pretty careful about what is cut and what is preserved.  I'm sure there was a reason.  Here is a link to the Campus Forest Mnagement Plan.

LINK

Then agian, maybe they walked off during the night.

youn2948

May 19th, 2015 at 4:03 PM ^

By trees that'll be more enthusiastic.  Those trees didn't fully embrace #EUTM.



They just sort of swayed in the wind, had horrible attitude.

BlueBarron

May 19th, 2015 at 4:09 PM ^

Title reminded me of the fraternity that dug up a tree on north campus and dumped it on another fraternity's front lawn. THAT was a fun night in the Daily news room coming up with a a headline.

gjking

May 19th, 2015 at 4:12 PM ^

Engineering alumni received an email about this project. It was only $3G to get a dedicated tree with a plaque on it. Seems cheap to have your name on campus. Some friends and I were debating going in together and dedicating a Tree to J-MO. 

 

 

Engin77

May 19th, 2015 at 4:38 PM ^

I will be happy to ship any number of trees to you for half that price per tree, I'll throw in shipping within the 48 contiguous states.  Oh, and let me know what the plaques should say.

LSAClassOf2000

May 19th, 2015 at 4:41 PM ^

I heard about this from my brother-in-law, who works in the Duderstadt Center. It actually sounds like it will be an awesome space. Concept art from the article:

Don

May 19th, 2015 at 5:21 PM ^

but the high-flying rhetoric about what kind of environment it's going to create are overblown in the way that only university officials can do.

"The Gerstacker Grove is one of the most iconic and sacred open spaces on North Campus... brings U-M’s premiere arts, architecture and engineering communities together in an unprecedented interactive and visible way...creating a new destination for the arts and sciences...We expect the Grove to quickly become abuzz with a wide range of creative explorations and productions...”

The idea of creating multipurpose open spaces with areas for performance and other interactive public activities is hardly new; it's been tried in hundreds of urban and suburban locations all over the country over the last 50 years. Some are successful, and many others fail to create the sorts of activities that are invariably claimed by their planners. It takes a significant and continuous commitment of resources to maintain the level of planned activities that are the key to making such spaces truly successful.

"If you’re on central, you’re sitting next to State Street and all it has to offer,” Munson said. “You don’t have to work so hard to create community. On North, we’re spread out and we don’t have the same environment. Given that, we have to be more intentional about it... There are plenty of freshmen who live up here. I don’t feel they should have to get on a bus to join a community. I think it should be right here.”

A primary reason that central campus has the vitality and community it does is due to the fact that it's relatively dense collection of university facilities that are tightly integrated with the surrounding commercial and business areas in a way that's uncommon for many public universities. The absence of similarly close non-University entities creates a completely different dynamic on North Campus, and it's unlikely that re-arranging the spaces and trees in one spot is going to change it nearly as spectacularly as its claimed.