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Cities need more trees

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Re: Cities need more trees

#111

Post by jajko »

XorNot wrote: post #69
MrGilbert wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Albeit being a valid datapoint, the conclusion could as well be that it might be better to put electric power down in the ground, get better insurance, don't park under a tree, and so on…

Root penetration of buried services is a serious problem. While roots generally chase water, they will surround and crush any services which get in the way. Trenching and conduiting is also a lot more expensive. Which is to say: you're looking at a huge amount of cost for what could be described as a very marginal gain because it's already a city.

This is a non-issue in all of Europe maybe apart from south, even poor countries can afford this and root damage is negligent. Its not a serious-enough problem to change your city planning around.

Re: Cities need more trees

#112

Post by rambambram »

AidenVennis wrote: post #38
huevosabio wrote: post #26

One of my biggest complains for American cities is the risk adversity with respect to trees. In SF, the city went in a rampage to prune and tear down trees (mostly ficus) because of the risk of the branches falling. There are lots of rules for where you can and can't plant trees based on road visibility, signage, electric cables etc. Result is that you have a lot of tree-less spaces in a city where basically anything…

Streetview shows this very nicely for Mexico City. I wonder if having so many trees in the city would make chopping down of few trees for some new public development less frowned upon by residents?

Thanks, now I just spent two hours streetview surfing through Mexico City.

Re: Cities need more trees

#113

Post by classified »

lopis wrote: post #63
classified wrote: post #9

Trees are nothing but obstacles to traffic. If you take a good look at cities, you will see that they were built for cars, and cars alone. Anything that's not a car has no place in a city.

Even if that was true, sounds like a net gain if trees make cities more inhospitable for cars.

But then, where would all those poor cars live?

Re: Cities need more trees

#114

Post by nxobject »

jurmous wrote: post #32

Here in Utrecht the Netherlands they are trying to greenify the city to reduce heat stress during the hot months. They try to plant as much trees and plants as possible, they try not to mow grass often and let it grow, they encourage homes to remove tiled gardens and add green, they have programs to turn roofs into green roofs. I like it, the city feels nicer to life in. https://healthyurbanliving.utrecht.nl/fileadmi…

Portland, OR, has similar green roof code mandates, as well as tree replacement laws as well... although there is pressure from "developer-friendly" electeds to suspend these mandates. Boo for being short-sighted.

Re: Cities need more trees

#115

Post by nxobject »

jen729w wrote: post #88
yen223 wrote: post #8

> You can still see a stark difference between rich and poor neighbourhoods to this day based purely on tree cover. You can see that here in Sydney. The poorer Western Sydney suburbs have a noticeable lack of tree coverage when compared with the richer inner west, northern, and eastern suburbs. I don't know which direction cause and effect goes. It is plausible that affluent suburbs can afford to plant trees, but it…

Visit Canberra! We have a remarkable amount of trees, it’s beautiful. https://www.nca.gov.au/education/canberras-history/charles-w...

The ACT is full of really thoughtful planning in general. A reminder that experiment and sanity coexisting sometimes prevails when planning in the very long term for development :)

Re: Cities need more trees

#116

Post by nurple »

One thing I'm very frustrated by is my city's(Salt Lake) push for water conservation to the point they're paying residential owners to xeriscape their property. We've spent over a century terraforming the desert into a beautiful green canopy, and every day they're building more concrete and asphalt jungles with nearly no greenery while existing properties are tearing out greenery and replacing it with rocks. We even had one politician try to say we needed to cut the trees in the canyon down to save the Salt Lake, because they're absorbing too much water.

In the state, residential water usage is almost a single-digit percentage and unmetered secondary water systems have been a standard feature of neighborhoods built over farmland. They're now going around putting meters on the secondary water systems and no new developments even have them at all.

I'm really worried as the city is beginning to resemble hellscapes like Las Vegas and LA. The developer-captured legislature is just pushing shit through without much thought for their livability or scalability. Couple legislative sessions ago they removed the requirement for them to review referenda brought by concerned residents, which is one of the only methods we still had to push back against overdevelopment.

Re: Cities need more trees

#117

Post by nottorp »

lopis wrote: post #65
Mordisquitos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN commenters should definitely use the '/s' tag, as it is essential to correctly label the intention of sarcastic comments. /s

Well, this isn't Reddit, so many we could have less sarcasm? Sarcasm isn't accessible even with text tags and doesn't help move the discussion forward.

Yes, HN is as hostile to humour as StackOverflow is to 'don't give ready to paste code, teach the man how to fish instead' answers.

Re: Cities need more trees

#118

Post by surfingdino »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #96
PaulRobinson wrote: post #81

Spent last week in South California, visiting family. Flying into LAX made me feel like I was flying into a hell scape. From the air, no green was visible for miles. Compared to my home (London, originally Manchester), I thought it not just odd but barely liveable. You could almost the heat off the concrete by looking at it from the air. Driving around as far south as Orange County for the next week I was happily sur…

Next time you visit family get them to rent a house in Santa Barbara. Technically it's "central" California but it's only 90 minutes from LA and it's probably the coolest and most livable place in the whole state.

Might as well rent a small plane.

Re: Cities need more trees

#119

Post by grvbck »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #14

Does anyone have a "greenery index" of world cities?

Not really a universal index, but interesting nevertheless: MIT Treepedia has indexed some cities based on tree canopies from Google street view.

Some (to me) surprising finds, like Paris (8.8%) vs NY (13.5%).

https://senseable.mit.edu/treepedia

Re: Cities need more trees

#120

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

michael_vo wrote: post #87
huevosabio wrote: post #26

One of my biggest complains for American cities is the risk adversity with respect to trees. In SF, the city went in a rampage to prune and tear down trees (mostly ficus) because of the risk of the branches falling. There are lots of rules for where you can and can't plant trees based on road visibility, signage, electric cables etc. Result is that you have a lot of tree-less spaces in a city where basically anything…

"You cannot see the wood for trees" I'd argue there is so much good that the tradeoff of trees killing a few humans is worth it. The biological diversity that returns - birds, carbon soil. The air quality. Less chance that the heat will kill our senior citizens. Trees prevent floods. From NotJustBikes channel, trees and bushes can be used to obscure road visibility, which naturally forces drivers to slow down at a cu…

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