While forests are among the most classic common resources, urban forests are generally not thought of as commons, or even as forests. Instead, urban trees are divided up by ownership – private trees, street trees, park trees. They are typically planted and managed individually – truly a case where we fail to see the forest through the trees.

The value of urban forests is clear. Trees that thrive offer significant amenities to their immediate neighbors. Together these trees form the urban canopy, which provides multiple ecosystem services – improving air quality, moderating the heat island effect, managing stormwater, and providing habitat.

As the value of urban trees has become clearer, cities have invested in ‘million tree’ planting initiatives. Unfortunately, these programs too often reinforce social inequalities. Looking at New York City, this chapter examines tree planting through an environmental justice lens, and proposes that considering the urban forest as a unified public commons can be a path forward towards a more equitable city.

Drawing on Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione’s generative work, The City as a Commons, this chapter applies commons theory to public housing in the United States, which, despite decades of disinvestment and mismanagement, remains a significant community asset serving affordable housing needs. Using New York City’s embattled Housing Authority (NYCHA), the nation’s largest public housing agency, as a case study, the chapter argues that public housing, though not a classic common-pool resource, serves a broad swath of vulnerable urban residents and can be reimagined under an urban commons framework. Doing so ensures that, in a time of transitioning uses of public housing assets, residents have meaningful input concerning disposition of space within public housing campuses.The democratizing implications of commons theory respond to NYCHA residents’ essential exclusion (despite requirements in federal law) from revenue-driven decisions increasing private developers’ control over NYCHA properties through long-term land leases and public-private partnerships. A commons analysis, grounded in residents’ urban knowledge, experience, and need, and informed by the social function of property theory, adds normative and theoretical heft to residents’ equitable stake in decisions concerning public housing’s increasingly threatened spaces.

The City of Bologna is widely recognized for an innovative regulatory framework to enable urban commons. The “Regulation on public collaboration for the Urban Commons” produced more than 400 pacts of collaboration and was adopted by more than 180 Italian cities so far. The chapter presents an empirical assessment of 280 pacts (2014–2016). The analytical approach is rooted in the literature on political economyand quality of democracy. It investigates whether a model of co-governance applied to urban assets as commons impacts on the democratic qualities of equality and rule of law at the urban level. The findings suggest the need for an experimentalist policymaking approach to institutionally redesign the City as a platform enabling collective action of multi-stakeholder partnerships that should be entrusted with the task to trigger a neighborhood-based sustainable development.