Shortly after being elected Mayor in 2024, Larry Agran articulated an ambitious goal: to make Irvine the greenest city in America. But Mayor Agran’s efforts to create a greener, more sustainable Irvine began years earlier, when he worked alongside other early city leaders to establish the policies and programs that helped shape Irvine into the city it is today. That early leadership helped lay the foundation for Irvine’s extraordinary park system — now ranked the best in California and the second-best in the entire nation behind only Washington, DC. Years ago, Mayor Agran also set in motion a plan to plant 500,000 trees across Irvine, creating a greener, healthier, and more beautiful city for generations to come.
Today, Irvine is home to approximately 550,000 trees across public and private spaces, with tree “canopies” covering about 22 percent of the City. Building on this strong foundation, Irvine is now pursuing Mayor Agran’s next goal: achieving a 30 percent tree canopy by 2055. This new goal includes planting tens of thousands of additional trees throughout the City to help reduce Irvine’s carbon footprint, manage stormwater runoff, enhance biodiversity, mitigate the urban heat-island effect, cool our neighborhoods, and improve air quality.
More than 60,000 public trees currently line Irvine’s streets and fill our parks, where they are cared for by certified arborists and Public Works staff. But the majority of Irvine’s trees are on private properties and within Homeowner Associations (HOAs) — which means growing our urban forest is truly a community effort…