Roots can extend like 1.5 times or so the high of the tree. In each direction. Paving everything to 1 m of the trunk and expecting the tree roots to breath or be able to survive is extremely dumb.

We need to develop some sort of permeable pavement around this trees or, much better, none at all. Granting a bigger amount of this space by law could be done tomorrow. Taking selfies of yourself planting a tree where is not space for the roots, is just virtue signaling.

Instead to dump trees in some coins of our cities, we need a way to include entire forests to act as a big air conditioner for the city, central park style. And the will to make this places thrive instead to see it as a nuisance that must be cleaned where the unemployed people prune everything at sight. Nobody would put unemployed people at charge of the Mona Lisa. Trees are much more important for our survival than the Mona Lisa.

Totally. The tree I was referring to was at least three hundred years old, and had survived a road being built by it. Then the local government decided to pave the path so it got hardly any rain.

There is also a tree near me which has barely grown in thirty years due to close planting and most of the area near it being paved.