Cities
What your city adds to the dispute
California law sets the frame: who owns the tree, what you may cut, what counts as a nuisance. Your city decides two things on top of it: whether the tree is protected (so nobody can remove it without a permit, whatever the neighbors agree) and whether you have a view claim at all. Most Bay Area cities protect trees. Only a handful have view ordinances.
View ordinance cities
| City | Ordinance | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Oakland | Oakland Municipal Code Chapter 15.52, Views | Page live |
| Berkeley | Berkeley Municipal Code Chapter 12.45, Preservation of Views and Sunlight | Page live |
| Tiburon | View and sunlight obstruction from trees | In progress; text us |
| Belvedere | View protection | In progress; text us |
| Sausalito | Sausalito Municipal Code Chapter 11.12 | In progress; text us |
Cities not listed here have no view ordinance as far as we have verified, and California has no general right to a view. In those cities the dispute runs on hazard, encroachment and nuisance instead. Ordinance text is checked against the published municipal code; each city page links its source and shows the date last reviewed.
Protected-tree rules
Whether a tree in a dispute can be removed at all is a permit question, and it is answered city by city on Urban Forestry Guide's permit pages for 56 Bay Area jurisdictions: species and size thresholds, what the city requires in an arborist report, fees and penalties. When a Boundary Tree report concludes a tree should come down, the permit report is written there.