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Cities need more trees

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Re: Cities need more trees

#41

Post by buro9 »

rob74 wrote: post #39
have_faith wrote: post #24

Where I live, Sheffield in the UK, the council was nearly toppled because they chopped down some street trees. They still haven't fully recovered from it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_tree_felling_protest...

I'm also against chopping down trees - but sometimes tree protection turns into a pretext for NIMBYism, especially if it's against projects that are also good for the environment, such as public transport (felling 189 trees for a bus lane sounds like a lot, but if the trees shown in this photo https://proarbmagazine.com/controversial-sheffield-bus-lane-... are representative, those look more like shrubs)

There are a lot of species that may be misinterpreted as a shrub, i.e. a Hazel tree https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/br... is dense, and forms many smaller straighter branches shooting up in parallel... could easily be mistaken as a shrub as this next pic shows https://cotswoldtrees.com/hazel-corylus-avellana/ .

Still a tree though, and all trees are good trees.

Re: Cities need more trees

#42

Post by Mordisquitos »

nottorp wrote: post #34
self_awareness wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anything that's not a car has no place in a city. Erm, I thought cities are for people, not for cars

Erm, I think HN could use a "+1, well done sarcasm" upvote.

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

    /s

Re: Cities need more trees

#43

Post by benoliver999 »

rob74 wrote: post #39
have_faith wrote: post #24

Where I live, Sheffield in the UK, the council was nearly toppled because they chopped down some street trees. They still haven't fully recovered from it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_tree_felling_protest...

I'm also against chopping down trees - but sometimes tree protection turns into a pretext for NIMBYism, especially if it's against projects that are also good for the environment, such as public transport (felling 189 trees for a bus lane sounds like a lot, but if the trees shown in this photo https://proarbmagazine.com/controversial-sheffield-bus-lane-... are representative, those look more like shrubs)

It was a bigger scale. The plan was to cut down 17,500 of 35,500 street trees, all due to a total mis-reading of a report.

Instead of backing down the council ploughed on, got people arrested and even tried to jail one of its own councillors for protesting. It was a huge fiasco.

Re: Cities need more trees

#44

Post by pastage »

rob74 wrote: post #39
have_faith wrote: post #24

Where I live, Sheffield in the UK, the council was nearly toppled because they chopped down some street trees. They still haven't fully recovered from it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_tree_felling_protest...

I'm also against chopping down trees - but sometimes tree protection turns into a pretext for NIMBYism, especially if it's against projects that are also good for the environment, such as public transport (felling 189 trees for a bus lane sounds like a lot, but if the trees shown in this photo https://proarbmagazine.com/controversial-sheffield-bus-lane-... are representative, those look more like shrubs)

"one more lane" a buss lane means more hard and hot surfaces in a city. As long as you just add hard surfaces you are still making things worse. With that said buss lanes are more important than car lanes.

Re: Cities need more trees

#45

Post by djrobstep »

lmpdev wrote: post #18
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…

West Sydney was rural fields until it was developed during the later half of the 20th century I’m fairly sure the issue stems from insanely dense urban packing with a refusal to develop almost anything other than single family homes They try to maximise house size on small blocks leading to an almost impossible block to plant a tree on ——— Also pointing out Greater Western Sydney is one of the worst urban places in t…

But it’s not just the block sizes, it’s also the streets. Often Western Sydney streets have no trees at all (and even no footpaths)

Re: Cities need more trees

#46

Post by earthnail »

mantas wrote: post #25
f6v wrote: post #23

What I found incredibly uncomfortable when moving from Eastern to Western Europe is a lack of shade in residential areas. Yes, there’re parks, but the buildings often don’t have enough shade (anecdotal evidence). With the rising temperatures, many homes are exposed to sun whole day. I live in a city that’s been growing really fast and none of the newer residential houses have any trees around them. Mind you it takes…

Don't worry, newer developments in eastern europe suck at tree coverage too.

Newer Western European developments tend to focus a lot on trees again in my experience. So there’s hope.

Re: Cities need more trees

#48

Post by pferde »

stuaxo wrote: post #12
mglz wrote: post #3

Lots of chopping trees seems to come from a laziness of thinking, where certain people in the city adminsitration are just used to the idea "trees cause costs". They never think any further about benefits beyond finances.

Or, as in Sheffield in the UK misaligned incentives: the company that was paid to manage the trees realised it was cheaper for them to cut them down, so started labelling trees as diseased that weren't.

Doesn't that count as plain old fraud?

Re: Cities need more trees

#49

Post by inferiorhuman »

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…

Kind of an odd flex given how walkable San Francisco is, but the "risk adversity" is because people actually die. Last year, five people died from fallen trees in a single storm (two in the city).

Re: Cities need more trees

#50

Post by pvaldes »

buro9 wrote: post #41
rob74 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also against chopping down trees - but sometimes tree protection turns into a pretext for NIMBYism, especially if it's against projects that are also good for the environment, such as public transport (felling 189 trees for a bus lane sounds like a lot, but if the trees shown in this photo https://proarbmagazine.com/controversial-sheffield-bus-lane-... are representative, those look more like shrubs)

There are a lot of species that may be misinterpreted as a shrub, i.e. a Hazel tree https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/br... is dense, and forms many smaller straighter branches shooting up in parallel... could easily be mistaken as a shrub as this next pic shows https://cotswoldtrees.com/hazel-corylus-avellana/ . Still a tree though, and all trees are good trees.

Hazelnut on cities are mainly from two different species. Corylus avellana is clearly a shrub, even if can grow 6m high with time, and will recover fast from being chopped, but the other species is a tree.
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