[Image: Photo by Alissa Walker of Gelatobaby].
An overlooked urban land-use typology is the telephone pole farm, used for honing the climbing skills of telephone-repair personnel, as seen here in a photograph from Los Angeles by Alissa Walker. Along these lines, it might be interesting to explore a training facility for tree-trimming crews—a test-forest populated by genetically-modified trees grown for the complexity of their branches.
(Via Pruned and @nicolatwilley).
ooh, interesting proposal. Anyone from ISA or other arboricultural associations reading this?
There are actually organized events at these different grounds called "lineman's rodeos" where each lineman competes in time trials and other contests.
There is this nice publication by Michael Parker about his training as a lineman: http://halfletterpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=20_4&products_id=212
or trees for climbing? It seems like it would be relatively easy to grow trees to be easy or interesting to climb — obstructing their growth at particular points to make easy-to-cling-to bends, for instance.
A park with easy-climbing trees would be great fun. Surely this must exist somewhere?