How Blacktown City Council Turned Tree-Planting Into a Risk Management Success

In local government, risks often arrive in familiar forms: ageing infrastructure, legislative breaches and reputational damage. However, occasionally, risk emerges not from what does happen but from what hasn’t happened yet.

That was the premise of Blacktown City Council’s project, The Risk of Not Planting Trees. The initiative, recognised as a finalist in the CivicRisk Mutual Excellence in Risk Management Awards, reframed urban greening as a core municipal risk and a key climate and public amenity concern. In doing so, it built a framework that other local councils can learn from.

Reframing Inaction as Risk

Urban trees offer communities lifestyle features, including shade, aesthetic upgrades and civic identity. But Blacktown Council’s project came in response to a localised, yet global issue: rapid expansion and development in the area had compromised the local tree canopy, resulting in an increasing ambient air temperature.

“Climate change is coming,” says Adam Cowell, Manager of Asset Planning and Support, “and we needed to drive a message.”

According to the council, failing to plant trees — especially in a sprawling, sun-exposed area like Blacktown — exacerbates health risks, contributes to local infrastructure degradation and accelerates the effects of urban heat. Yet planting trees blindly could also invite new liabilities such as invasive roots, obscured sightlines and increased footpath hazards.

The challenge was to quantify both ends of that spectrum in a legally and operationally sound way.

Building a Data-Driven Risk Framework

With no blueprint to follow, the council built its own from the ground up. The project drew together land-based and aerial data capture, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and advanced modelling to produce a multidimensional view of the challenge.

The council collected massive datasets, then analysed and transformed them into 2D and 3D predictive models. These visualisations informed where trees should go, which species, in what density and under what surrounding conditions.

The council worked in tandem with urban planners, arborists, engineers, risk professionals and data scientists. Emerging from this collaboration was a model that incorporated legal compliance, climate risk, community wellbeing and asset management. Blacktown City Council interconnected these factors to drive strategic decision-making.

The Bigger Lesson For Councils: Quantify or Risk It

Tree planting was no longer an environmental good with incidental downsides. It became a calculable municipal investment with traceable returns.

The benefits are already measurable. Blacktown has improved sun safety for pedestrians, promoted physical activity through shaded routes and taken early steps to mitigate heat-related degradation of roads and footpaths. The initiative also contributed to broader public health goals — mental wellbeing, carbon reduction and even crime prevention, with research suggesting that well-treed areas see higher rates of passive surveillance and social cohesion.

Critically, the project aligned tightly with the council’s risk appetite. The risks of planting trees (disruptive roots, debris hazards) were no longer unknown: they were factors mitigated by design.

Concrete Challenges Led to Flexible Footpaths

Perhaps the most pragmatic innovation came when theory met pavement. Tree roots breaking footpaths are a well-known risk, increasing the likelihood of trips, falls and the inevitable claims that follow.

The Council’s City Assets team tackled the problem head-on, trialling a non-slip, porous paving product to replace standard concrete in tree-heavy zones. The material flexes with root growth, drains efficiently and reduces slipperiness caused by wet foliage — a small shift in approach but one with disproportionate long-term impact.

This solution alone could reshape how councils nationally approach tree-lined infrastructure by acknowledging the risk and responding without retreating from the environmental goal.

A Model Others Can Borrow

What makes Blacktown’s approach successful is not just the tech or the tools — it’s the thinking. The project is a masterclass in reframing: identifying a silent, creeping risk and treating it with the seriousness of a structural hazard.

It also reinforced a more significant lesson for local government: Risk is rarely a matter of avoidance. Instead, it is a discipline of understanding. By quantifying action and inaction, councils can make more confident, transparent decisions and build community trust.

As climate volatility increases and public expectations around livability rise, councils cannot afford to treat urban greening as a discretionary extra. Fortunately, the Risk of Not Planting Trees is a replicable template other councils can apply in their communities.