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Why is this a Climate Smart indicator?

• Increasing urban greenery such as tree canopy, green roofs, street trees, and green corridors helps capture carbon (though on a smaller per‐area scale), contributing to local reductions in GHG emissions.
• Urban greening also helps to mitigate urban heat islands. Less citywide urban heat island effect would reduce the demand for air conditioning, in turn lowering energy use and avoiding additional greenhouse gas emissions.
• Increasing urban greenery also contributes to improvements in air quality, stormwater management, public health, and shade and cooling in vulnerable neighborhoods.

Key Strategies

• Urban Forest Expansion: Increasing tree canopy in areas such as parks, open spaces, and on private property.
• Street Tree Planting: Increasing tree canopy in areas that are primarily in the public right-of-way such as in parking strips and medians adjacent to or within a street.

What is the City doing to make progress on this indicator?

Completed

• The City’s Department of Transportation has planted 3,240 street trees and the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services (PRNS) has planted 1,669 trees in parks (2023-present)
• Integration of the Forestry team into the Planning Building and Code Enforcement project review and tree selection process, with the goal of improving location-based tree selection and support (2023)

Planned

• The City’s Forestry team is planning on partnering with PRNS, non-profits and contractors to plant at least 1,500 new trees by the end of FY 25-26.
• The City’s Forestry team will work with PRNS to increase the population of trees in city parks, complete a park tree inventory, and execute shared tree service contracts.

about the data

Sources

This metric is based on a service level objective under Envision San José 2040 General Plan Goal PR-1: Acres of neighborhood and community recreation lands per 1,000 population. Data is collected from General Plan Annual Performance Reviews and is based on “Actual Service Level” data, which is recorded at the end of San José’s fiscal year (June 30.) Mid-year data from these reports are used to estimate calendar year data in this Update.

Population data are from the California Department of Finance’s Demographics Unit (Table E-5).

Total acreage is calculated by dividing the Actual Service Level data by 1,000 and multiplying by the population in the year of interest.

Limitations

Since the data being reported under this metric aren’t obtained from direct land area measurements, they may differ from the true acreage of neighborhood and community serving parkland within San Jose’s sphere of influence.

Data used to calculate the ratio under PR-1 include some satellite imagery-based acreage estimates from the Greenprint. Until more accurate data is obtained, Greenprint data will continue to be used to estimate a portion of this metric's acreage.

Last updated

November 2025