51–60 of 74 posts
Worth noting that these are only the trees that line roads - so quite a few of those dark areas are actually parks and woods crammed with trees.
Pretty cool site, though!
Did not see anyone mention what’s available in Singapore yet: https://www.nparks.gov.sg/treessg And you can build on it too: https://exploretrees.sg/
London has a surprising history and love for its trees, more so than I've seen in other cities I've lived in. This means you can find a lot of fun listicles that provide history and fun facts for trees located around the city. For example, [Great Trees of London]( https://londonist.com/london/maps/great-trees-of-london-map ) has a collection I'd actually enjoy walking around, and coupling with other sites in the area…
If I remember correctly, London has around 8.5 million trees (for a population of almost 9 million, 1:1 tree:person) and Sheffield has around 4.5 million (for a much smaller population of less than 600,000, 7.5:1 tree:person). Sheffield has more trees per person than any other city in Europe.
Sheffield council tried to cut down thousands of trees a few years ago and it caused massive backlash, protests and arrests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_tree_felling_protest...
i should point out that not all of the uk cares as much for its trees: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/06/sheffield-ci...
Since the protests, the council stopped cutting the trees down and reversed course.
Sheffield has more trees per person than any other city in Europe. Around 4.5 million trees for a population of 600,000 (7.5:1).
This is an unusually nice website, but if you like this, check your own city, they might have one too! For example, here's: DC: https://trees.dc.gov/apps/3677bceead544db79a412e3ab0a68588/e... Boston: https://boston.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?... LA: https://losangelesca.treekeepersoftware.com/index.cfm
Earlier quoted context omitted.
London GDP is about £500 billion. They’ll need this info to maintain the trees in any case. If it cost 100k, it would be 0.02% of GDP. For the difference trees make to urban areas, it would be utterly trivial. If you made £50k cash after tax a year (so closer to 80k before tax), it would be £10 a year, that’s the fraction. Of course it costs far more than £100k to maintain this data.
I think most Londoners wouldn't want to pay £10/year for a tree database. Imagine a sign saying "Just donate £10 so we can have a database to tell us where our trees are", I bet the vast majority of Londoners wouldn't hand over £10. Even a keen gardener wouldn't likely pay £10 to have a map of where all the vegetables in their vegetable patch were.
I bet this this website cost London £100k or more. They probably contracted it out to some supplier to build and maintain, and they are charging through the nose for hosting it, because the people on the London horticultural team don't do HTML. While I applaud the effort, I do wonder if it is tax money well spent. Perhaps a spreadsheet on a shared drive would have been better value for money?
As anyone who’s been near government data publishing or asset tracking works attest - That’s a sure fire way to either publish stale/wrong information or simply lose trees. I’m not in London but surely there is more than 100k in public policy good to be had in promoting trees as assets that are worth stewarding well. Is population scale care for trees with a month of arborist days? Urban forests make air conditioning…
Regarding drainage, there is so little soil left in London that surface drainage of the kind you seem to be thinking of is non-existent. We had to build the supersewer to deal with it, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_Tideway_Scheme
Worth noting that these are only the trees that line roads - so quite a few of those dark areas are actually parks and woods crammed with trees.
Parks and woods would be maintained in a different process. Obviously it's acceptable and even desirable to have fallen down trees in woods and some parks.