This way we could have both forests and urban areas acting as carbon sinks. Somebody should tell Americans and EU leaders that wooden buildings do indeed exist already.
It goes beyond that. A forest is not only a collection of trees. To have a forest you also need an undergrowth (I think it's called that way). That's why we have less forest but more trees in some places in Europe.
We need urgently to stop cutting virgin forests. There are not many left and it'll take centuries, maybes millennia to have them back.
This process can be sped up via intelligent afforestation (Miyawaki, permaculture etc).
Heavy mulching combined with densely planted native plants of different heights (everything from understory to canopy layer) effectively traps enough moisture and introduces a wide enough variety of microbes to sufficiently kick start a positive spiral mimicking virgin forests.
This requires manual input of water and mulching for the first two years or so. After that point you have a self sufficient, dense forest that rivals natural ones.
Combined with water harvesting (swales, check dams, man made ponds) this has been proven very effective in dry parts India, China, Northern Africa and Australia.
Now I wonder. With an efficient water desalinization how long would it take us to turn arid zones into complete oasis?
That would be massively helpful against global warming.
Concrete without rebar can be used for construction of small buildings and those would last a long, long time. Much longer than anything made of timber. A 20-generation home of sorts. Remember that once the timber rots away or is burnt, the trapped carbon gets released again.
Some Roman concrete piers have actually hardened further through the constant action of the waves, so they are now harder than they were in antiquity.
Let's grow more trees and go back to buildings made of wood isn't commonly suggested though.
In the UK wood is historically used for floors, doors and windows. The rest was stone until canals and trains enabled brick to be used. With roads came concrete.