Trees,Wood,and Paper: Materialities of Urban Arboriculture in Modern Berlin

Abstract

The systematization of street tree planting in twentieth-century cities went hand in hand with the development of the modern city’s managerial system. In the systematization process, tree planting and care was serialized and standardized. To facilitate these procedures, tree locations and conditions began to be surveyed, planned, and recorded on paper. Focusing on street tree planting in East and West Berlin, this article examines the role of different paper formats, technologies, and representations such as lists, plans, maps, and index and edge-notched cards in the evolution of an increasingly regimented urban arboriculture. Paper was intricately related to both the life and death of the trees that it helped to document. As much as the malleable and variable nature and materiality of street trees contributed to an evolution of paper formats to capture the trees’ changeable conditions, so the use of paper to control, regulate, and systematize also contributed to standardizing trees, their planting, and their care.