Before expanding its urban forest, the spanish municipality of Pinto is building a clearer picture of the thousands already growing across its streets and public spaces.
Located around 20 kilometres south of Madrid, Pinto is home to approximately 56,000 people and a substantial urban tree population. Some streets have been surveyed in the past, others have not. For a growing municipality planning to expand its green areas, that leaves an important information gap because future planting decisions do not begin with an empty map. New trees become part of an existing population of mature trees, younger plantings and trees growing under very different conditions across streets, parks, school grounds and other public spaces.
Understanding that population is an important part of deciding what should come next.
In late July 2026, greehill spent four days scanning approximately 12,000 street trees for Aserpinto, Pinto’s municipal services company. The work forms part of Aserpinto’s wider Smart City programme and is intended to support future green-area planning and growth.
A further approximately 12,000 trees in Pinto’s parks are planned for the next phase.
Planning growth starts with the existing urban forest
Municipal planting programmes are often measured by the number of trees added. That is a useful measure of activity, but it says relatively little about how the urban forest itself is developing. New trees enter a population that already represents decades of biological growth, maintenance and public investment. They have to establish and mature while existing trees continue to grow, decline or require intervention. Streets and public spaces also offer very different conditions for long-term tree development.
For municipal teams, planning additional planting therefore requires more than identifying available locations. It requires a reliable understanding of the population they are adding to. Pinto’s existing records do not yet provide that picture consistently across the municipality. Creating a more complete view of the existing tree population gives Aserpinto stronger information for decisions about how its green areas should develop.
The timing matters. Pinto is growing within the Madrid metropolitan region, where increasingly demanding summer conditions add another consideration to long-term public-space planning. Increasing tree numbers is only one part of that work. The longer-term objective is a tree population that can establish, mature and provide substantial, well-distributed canopy over time.
That requires understanding what exists today before deciding where future investment should go.
12,000 street trees in four days
During four days of fieldwork in late July, a greehill scanning vehicle covered Pinto’s street network using mobile LiDAR to capture approximately 12,000 trees and their immediate surroundings in three dimensions. The captured information is processed into structured digital representations of individual trees, providing measurable characteristics such as tree height, crown dimensions and trunk geometry. At municipal scale, the significance is not the scan itself. It is the ability to bring information about thousands of individual trees into a consistent view of the wider population.
The original scope concentrated on street trees. During the work, however, Aserpinto identified several additional locations where information was considered an immediate priority. Selected areas within elementary school grounds and heavily used central park areas were therefore added to the first phase because of their relevance from a public-safety perspective.
This reflects a practical reality of municipal tree management. Planned programmes have to accommodate operational priorities. Schools, heavily used parks and other intensively occupied public spaces can require attention earlier because of how those places are used. Large-scale tree information does not replace professional inspection or arboricultural judgement. It can help professionals identify where closer attention is required and provide better context for decisions in the field.
From street trees to a wider municipal picture
Approximately 12,000 additional trees located in Pinto’s parks are planned for a subsequent phase. The significance of that next step is not simply that the number of digitally recorded trees could increase to around 24,000. Street trees and park trees exist within different physical conditions, patterns of public use and maintenance requirements. Bringing both into a consistent information base gives municipal teams a broader understanding of the urban forest they are responsible for managing and developing.
That becomes particularly important when expansion is planned. A planting programme can record how many trees have been added. A detailed understanding of the existing population allows more demanding questions to be asked:
- How does new planting relate to what is already there?
- Where are trees concentrated across the municipality?
- Where are the gaps?
- How is the structure and distribution of the population changing? Where should future green-area investment be focused?
A tree inventory alone cannot answer every one of those questions. Species selection, soil conditions, available growing space, water availability, establishment, maintenance capacity and professional arboricultural assessment remain fundamental to whether individual trees and the wider urban forest perform successfully.
What happens after planting matters
Urban forestry operates on a different timescale from most municipal reporting cycles. A planting programme can be completed within a budget year. The urban forest it is intended to create develops over decades. That distinction matters when cities evaluate progress. The number of trees planted records an intervention. Long-term urban forest development depends on what happens afterwards: which trees establish, how they grow, how existing trees develop, where canopy is gained or lost and how the overall population changes across streets, neighbourhoods and public spaces. Understanding the existing tree population provides a reference point for following that development over time.
For Pinto, the immediate objective is to use its first greehill Smart Tree Inventory to support future green-area planning and growth. The first 12,000 street trees establish an important part of that picture. The planned park-tree phase will extend it further.
The wider lesson is relevant to other growing municipalities. Planting targets can define ambition, but they do not describe the urban forest a city will eventually have. That depends on where trees are planted, whether they establish, how existing trees are maintained and protected, and how the population develops over many years.
Pinto is beginning by improving its understanding of what is already growing. That gives the municipality a stronger foundation for deciding what should grow next.
Interested in how a Smart Tree Inventory could support the future development of your city’s urban forest? Get in touch with the greehill team.
