This is the third column in a series about Atlanta’s trees

A groundswell of community leaders are doing all they can to make sure Joni Mitchell’s song “Big Yellow Taxi” doesn’t become Atlanta’s reality.

The song’s chorus feels all too familiar:

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Atlanta is uniquely positioned as a city in a forest, and there is a movement afoot to make sure it stays that way.