Indian cities are expanding green cover, but many plantation drives remain concentrated in urban forests and peripheral green spaces.
Dispersed tree planting along streets, footpaths, markets and neighbourhood public spaces can improve shade, walkability and outdoor thermal comfort.
Tree cover is especially important for heat-vulnerable groups such as street vendors, delivery workers, sanitation workers and pedestrians.
Cities need better protocols to replace trees lost to storms, ageing and disease, so urban canopy cover is maintained over time.
Cities across India are making significant efforts to expand urban green cover. This is a welcome and necessary response to rising temperatures, with additional benefits for biodiversity and carbon sequestration.
Delhi, for instance, has announced plans to restore and protect its 6,300-hectare Ridge by planting more than 10 million plants, including over 6.5 million trees. Varanasi recently planted 250,000 saplings in a single day as part of its urban forest initiative. The Nagar Van Yojana aims to develop 400 Nagar Vans and 200 Nagar Vatikas to enhance trees outside forests and increase green cover in cities.
However, a significant share of these large-scale plantation drives remains concentrated in urban forests, peripheral green spaces and other aggregated sites. While these landscapes provide important ecological benefits, cities must also extend greening to outdoor public spaces where people spend their everyday lives.
As temperatures rise, many public spaces are becoming too hot to use comfortably. Improving outdoor thermal comfort can keep these spaces usable, encourage walking and social interaction, and create a more active public realm.
Trees are among the most effective ways to improve thermal comfort in a city. They cool ambient air through evapotranspiration — the release of water vapour from their leaves — which has been found to improve the microclimate by lowering ambient air temperatures by up to 2.8 degrees Celsius (°C).
Their most understated benefit, however, comes from shade. At midday, solar radiation reaching the ground can approach 900-1,000 Watts per square metre (W/m²), a significant share of which is absorbed by the human body. This makes direct solar exposure a primary driver of outdoor thermal discomfort. Trees intercept incoming solar radiation, reducing the heat felt by people outdoors.
Reducing solar radiation also prevents hard surfaces such as asphalt and pavements from absorbing and re-radiating heat through the day. Tree shade has been found to reduce surface temperatures by more than 20°C in some cases. While a full tree canopy can take many years to develop, simulations across Indian cities have shown that even relatively sparse canopies can lower surface temperatures by 6-8°C.
Enhancing tree cover across streets, footpaths, markets and other public spaces where people live, work and move is one of the most underused opportunities for urban climate adaptation and reducing the urban heat island effect.
These spaces are particularly important for heat-vulnerable groups, including street vendors, delivery workers and sanitation workers, who spend long periods outdoors. As cities invest in cooling stations and other heat refuges, expanding urban tree cover offers a low-cost, scalable way to extend shade and improve thermal comfort across a much wider network of public spaces.
Some cities have begun to recognise the importance of integrating trees into streets and public spaces. Delhi’s Tree Transplantation Policy, 2020, for instance, prioritises transplanting trees along Public Works Department roads when on-site retention is not possible. This acknowledges the role of roadside trees in improving shade and thermal comfort.
However, the Public Works Department manages only roads wider than 60 feet (18.28 metres). Narrower neighbourhood streets, which residents use every day for interaction and last-mile connectivity, remain outside its scope. Urban greening efforts must therefore extend to these streets as well.
Even where roadside planting takes place, it is often poorly designed. Trees are frequently prioritised along central medians, while footpaths and pedestrian areas remain inadequately shaded.
The Supreme Court’s recognition of the right to walk in June 2026 has reaffirmed the need for cities to provide safe and accessible pedestrian infrastructure. As streets are redesigned to uphold this right, it is equally important to ensure that people can move comfortably, particularly as temperatures rise.
This presents an opportunity to integrate outdoor thermal comfort into street design by prioritising tree planting along footpaths and pedestrian spaces, ensuring continuous shade without obstructing movement. Walkability and thermal comfort should together guide the design of future streets, so commuting is both safe and comfortable.
Cities can begin by identifying road stretches where such planting is feasible and integrating them into streetscape planning and maintenance. This requires adequate rooting space, permeable paving around tree pits to support water infiltration and soil aeration, and long-term maintenance protocols to ensure healthy tree growth.
Another opportunity to place trees within the existing urban fabric lies in implementing compensatory plantation requirements for unplanned tree loss.
Strong winds and concretisation around tree trunks are a deadly combination, contributing to the uprooting of mature trees across Indian cities. For instance, during heavy monsoon rain and strong winds in Mumbai on July 6, 2026, 523 trees fell in a single day. Delhi also loses hundreds of trees every monsoon.
While fallen trees are usually removed to restore public safety and mobility, they are rarely replaced at or near the same location. Over time, this results in a gradual decline in canopy cover across streets and public spaces.
Many cities already require compensatory plantation when trees are felled with official permission. For example, the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act, 1994, mandates replacement planting when permission is granted to fell or dispose of a tree. However, trees lost to storms, ageing or disease are not systematically replaced in practice.
As climate change increases the frequency of extreme weather events, cities need protocols to ensure that all tree losses, not only authorised felling, trigger timely replacement planting.
Periodic tree censuses can play a critical role by tracking tree loss, survival rates and replacement planting across the city. Linking tree inventories with compensatory plantation and maintenance programmes would improve transparency, strengthen accountability and help ensure that urban tree cover is sustained over time rather than gradually eroded.
Mass plantation drives can deliver multiple environmental and social benefits, but those benefits depend greatly on where trees are planted.
Strategic placement across streets, neighbourhoods and public spaces can significantly enhance liveability, outdoor thermal comfort and the everyday usability of urban spaces.
Urban forests will continue to play a vital ecological role. But climate resilience will also depend on how effectively trees are integrated into the everyday fabric of the city.
By prioritising tree cover where people live, walk and work, cities can transform urban greening from a plantation exercise into a public health and climate adaptation strategy.
Explore simulation results for cooling in public spaces in this interactive tool developed by CSE: https://www.cseindia.org/page/coolit-infogram