While it is possible to trim a tree so severely it doesn\u2019t grow back - there\u2019s a few in the parking lot at the Pho place down the street - the real energy against \u201ctree topping\u201d is mostly on aesthetic grounds using arboricultural concerns as a front, and the latter-day tendency to inflate it to a moral and then regulatory issue along the same path as animal welfare stuff like anti-declawing is worrying
And historically it\u2019s perfectly normal for some of the trees near centers of human settlement to be pollarded
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