London is a Forest

Can a city be a forest? At first glance, this does not chime with our childhood idea of the ‘wild wood’ – a dark entanglement of trees, where humans fear to tread. But a forest does not need to be dense and impenetrable, and it’s not unheard of for people to live in them either.

In London, 8.6 million people are crammed into just 600 square miles alongside 8.3 million trees, and millions upon millions of other plants, insects and animals. According to one UN definition, this makes the city a...