This is really smart imo. Portland uses tree cover near the roads to keep them cooler. This year the city put data to that idea and identified "heat islands" that occurred due to a large drop off in tree coverage. Similar study below:
There's also the fact that trees are a long-term way to create welcoming public spaces. Nobody wants to sit next to a busy road huffing exhaust fumes, but put a couple trees there and a bench? Suddenly it's a nice meet-up spot. In fact, putting extra trees onto existing plazas would be a huge positive.
After moving from California to Portland, a PNW summer is much more enjoyable because of the trees. Ambient temps could be around 90°F and walking outside is still pleasant because the streets are covered with huge trees.
I live in Georgia and the summer is not a bother at all in my neighborhood because it's so forested. I can take a causal walk outside up until about 90F. Florida was hell even at the same temperatures because palm trees just aren't the same as oaks or pines.
Really depends on the part of the city you’re in. Take the green line out to Lents and walk back to the city center and you will develop an even greater appreciation for the difference trees make.
Good to have studies, but shouldn't even need them as the effect is pretty clear and undebatable when just experienced. It is not only coverage but evaporation from trees, too, besides the nice view and psychological effect of bringing a bit if nature into dead towns.
Agreed, very smart, never understood why not more cities do that when feasible besides the long existing examples, especially as we have those heat waves and future prediction for quite a while..
In France, they started planting trees along the road during Napoleon era, so the soldiers could walk at the shadow of the trees. Definitly smart, but also very old idea ahah
That said, with the car development, they cut most of the trees because well...a car hitting a tree is not good.
On the opposite end. We in Germany keep them because the prospect of your car getting wrapped around the tree is a good reason drivers use to go slower. Flipside is I can read about drunk teens dying to them every couple of weeks :/
I know everyone is gonna talk about how we need to give the poor more money, but I honestly truly believe there's no better way the city can spend money than planting and maintaining trees.
It employs people, and it's really not that expensive, and the impact is demonstrably enormous.
> everyone is gonna talk about how we need to give the poor more money
Tangent but David Harvey says "wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism". A better way is to do a few things differently so those people are better empowered to make more money for themselves. This can be achieved by promoting worker control and ownership in the economy, so that when the economy does well so do regular people. There is no need for heavy handed manipulation to achieve this - we currently have plenty of laws subsidizing and promoting non worker-owned businesses. A little support for learning about, starting, and maintaining worker owned businesses would go a long way to ensuring that regular people don't end up poor in the first place.
And then when we think of where to spend our tax dollars we can all agree that spending on planting trees is a great use of funds.
Interesting, this applies to people in employment. When I read the word poor, I was thinking of people experiencing homelessness who usually are unemployed. But there are lots of working poor too.
> Tangent but David Harvey says "wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism". A better way is to do a few things differently so those people are better empowered to make more money for themselves.
This is a pretty interesting take.
From a Capitalist perspective, people know what they want - and the market is "efficient" when you let people do what they want. There's nothing more efficient than giving people money.
From a Socialist perspective - I guess this is obviously wrong? If an economy free of government interventions worked, you wouldn't need Socialism in the first place? So it's better to let the government make investments on your behalf?
Rents only go up if more people want to live somewhere or can afford more to live there - or, maybe short-term, if the government levies more taxes.
If you make everywhere nice, then you don't need to pay a premium to live somewhere nice.
Maybe you have to pay a miniscule amount more in property taxes.
You could just stop running trash & sewer service and let the city turn to garbage if you want lower rents. I don't think that's what people want. They want somewhere nice to live.
In Bay Area, if you can see a tree from the window the rent is more. If it’s a scenic view, the rent is a lot more. Rent is gamification donee right, mandatory in-app purchases.
The article mentions that rows of trees is “the old” way of planting trees and this new technology will enable … what exactly?
Obviously they won’t plant in the middle of the road, and I get the benefit of identifying areas that needs trees, but what exactly is different in the way they are placed along the road?
> Our model is able to measure canopy coverage using newer lidar data than existing canopy coverage maps and measure the size and volume of individual canopies, making it easier to see where healthy trees are located and where existing canopies are lacking
I wish these sorts of studies quantified how much more useful they are than the last model. There's a lot of papers out there where they reproduce some finding from an older method or dataset, but use the new hot method or dataset. Very few of them go ahead and do power comparisons between old and new, to see if it was even worth all the trouble and by how much.
They mentioned “leaf-level” visualization, meaning they have now 3D data to work with instead of a pixel on a map. Practically this means they can simulate time of day coverage, and can plan for tree species for different foliage heights.
As others have said: it depends heavily on the neighborhood. I grew up in a neighborhood with decent (but not great) tree coverage; my current neighborhood has full canopies on many blocks.
(This is one of the things I found most surprising about otherwise far more livable European cities: East Coast US cities tend to be far greener in a “diffuse” sense, if not in terms of total park area.)
It's what I find stark between London and other continental captials too. You get seduced as there's often a trophy park, but after a while you realise that's pretty much it for miles, apart from the occasional square - looking at you in particular, Paris and Madrid.
What most municipalities seem to fail to account for with urban canopy initiatives is the increased maintenance costs associated with root growth under pavement/sidewalks and increased private property burdens when trees die or are blown over in increasingly more severe wind storms. My city had multiple "derechos" a few years ago, and there's still plenty of yards with hazardous branches over structures and piles of decaying wood with no one that can afford to haul them away. Anecdotally I've heard that this is grounds for home insurance companies to deny renewed coverage.
Definitely worth pointing out not all trees are suitable for urban greening.
I can't remember what they're called, but in Australia we plant some deciduous tree that has deep but narrow root base which makes them minimally destructive to footpaths etc, as well as, being quite resistant to wind (especially in winter when they don't have leaves!)
NYC uses ginkgos for this purpose. They still make up a fairly small portion of the trees in the city, though. They're also particularly hardy when it comes to handling pollution, which is obviously valuable in cities.
I believe this style of root system is called a taproot.
> “It’s about not just planting more trees, but the right tree in the right spot,” said Alexander Kobald, a researcher at Cornell University. “It’s really focusing on what the spot calls for and making sure the people [who live near the trees] feel heard.”
What is this “researcher” saying though? There’s nothing specific. It’s just some vague thing with a dash of social justice signaling thrown in.
Who decides what a spot calls for? How do we communicate with it. What is “right” and how do we ensure the right tree was put in spots that have been classified as “right”?
NYC is also interesting in that landowners are responsible for maintaining the sidewalks in front of their property instead of the city.
Depending on your point of view, that's actually a solution to the problem you pose: the costs of maintaining damage from this plan are spread across private owners.
It does mean that owners will grumble in fall months when they have to clear leaves from their sidewalks, and will complain in the rare occasions when their sidewalks crack, meanwhile their home value ticks upward silently.
Creating perverse incentives where real estate owners are responsible for the damages caused by trees that the city insists on planting (and real estate owners are likely prohibited from maintaining) is not what I'd call a "solution". Asset values going up doesn't do anything about those perverse incentives. And in fact rising asset values is actually a liability for long-term owner occupiers, ultimately just facilitating more financialization and centralization of wealth by professional investors.
I'm all for more trees. I'm just against this dynamic where such improvements are partially funded at the outset only, leaving the fallout as externalities that everyone has to suffer. If the city wants to plant trees that will eventually destroy the sidewalk, then the city should take on the responsibility for maintaining the sidewalks.
Considering historical disparities in tree planting and landscaping promulgated by Robert Moses and subsequent officials, this is a great step in the right direction. Community boards have already been pushing for this kind of environmental justice
I've also genuinely wondered if using white trash bags would have a measurable impact. Hopefully that's all going away with their "large bins" and make room for foliage
How do you solve the canopy challenge while not introducing challenges presented by tree roots? Is this a problem for the city 15+ years from now, so don't worry about it?
Readit News
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-06/documents/ur...
That said, with the car development, they cut most of the trees because well...a car hitting a tree is not good.
I still don’t get why we didn’t do more to support Friends Of Trees.
It employs people, and it's really not that expensive, and the impact is demonstrably enormous.
Tangent but David Harvey says "wealth redistribution is the lowest form of socialism". A better way is to do a few things differently so those people are better empowered to make more money for themselves. This can be achieved by promoting worker control and ownership in the economy, so that when the economy does well so do regular people. There is no need for heavy handed manipulation to achieve this - we currently have plenty of laws subsidizing and promoting non worker-owned businesses. A little support for learning about, starting, and maintaining worker owned businesses would go a long way to ensuring that regular people don't end up poor in the first place.
And then when we think of where to spend our tax dollars we can all agree that spending on planting trees is a great use of funds.
This is a pretty interesting take.
From a Capitalist perspective, people know what they want - and the market is "efficient" when you let people do what they want. There's nothing more efficient than giving people money.
From a Socialist perspective - I guess this is obviously wrong? If an economy free of government interventions worked, you wouldn't need Socialism in the first place? So it's better to let the government make investments on your behalf?
If you make everywhere nice, then you don't need to pay a premium to live somewhere nice.
Maybe you have to pay a miniscule amount more in property taxes.
You could just stop running trash & sewer service and let the city turn to garbage if you want lower rents. I don't think that's what people want. They want somewhere nice to live.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Obviously they won’t plant in the middle of the road, and I get the benefit of identifying areas that needs trees, but what exactly is different in the way they are placed along the road?
Covered in the article
> Our model is able to measure canopy coverage using newer lidar data than existing canopy coverage maps and measure the size and volume of individual canopies, making it easier to see where healthy trees are located and where existing canopies are lacking
It’s the USA so you’re probably right, but in other places roads have been depaved and/or pedestrianized, and trees could then be planted.
Now they've got a TED invitation in it.
Obviously midtown doesn't have a lot of trees.
But there are also residential neighborhoods with streets where the trees from both sides of the street meet above and form a canopy.
Not to mention the backyard areas of blocks of brownstones that can be full of trees and gardens and greenery.
And then if you're lucky enough to live near something like Prospect Park, well you've basically got the biggest backyard anybody could ever ask for.
(This is one of the things I found most surprising about otherwise far more livable European cities: East Coast US cities tend to be far greener in a “diffuse” sense, if not in terms of total park area.)
I can't remember what they're called, but in Australia we plant some deciduous tree that has deep but narrow root base which makes them minimally destructive to footpaths etc, as well as, being quite resistant to wind (especially in winter when they don't have leaves!)
I believe this style of root system is called a taproot.
> “It’s about not just planting more trees, but the right tree in the right spot,” said Alexander Kobald, a researcher at Cornell University. “It’s really focusing on what the spot calls for and making sure the people [who live near the trees] feel heard.”
Who decides what a spot calls for? How do we communicate with it. What is “right” and how do we ensure the right tree was put in spots that have been classified as “right”?
Is this a serious person?
Depending on your point of view, that's actually a solution to the problem you pose: the costs of maintaining damage from this plan are spread across private owners.
It does mean that owners will grumble in fall months when they have to clear leaves from their sidewalks, and will complain in the rare occasions when their sidewalks crack, meanwhile their home value ticks upward silently.
I'm all for more trees. I'm just against this dynamic where such improvements are partially funded at the outset only, leaving the fallout as externalities that everyone has to suffer. If the city wants to plant trees that will eventually destroy the sidewalk, then the city should take on the responsibility for maintaining the sidewalks.
Is that really unique? Everywhere I've lived the resident is required to clear leaves and snow.
You of course need to pick trees that fit the application and climat.