Why not follow Singapore and have both? Any greenery you cut down to build something must be replaced, and in Singapore that happens to be replaced by becoming part of the building itself. It's a very unique, and IMO, cool look when the skyscrapers have an open garden halfway through, or gardens on top with greenery down the sides.
I hope this will happen soon. NYC passed a green roof law in Nov. 2019 that requires all new or extensively renovated buildings to install gardens, urban agriculture, or solar on their roofs.
Loads of SF streets are hyper industrial and have no trees. It's strange what an effect it has. Walking through SOMA feels weirdly like being in a concrete video game. Walking through my neighbourhood in Glen Park is lovely and charming.
I work near the new building at 1550 mission and they've put trees down in front of that building and the street is instantly nicer.
Policies like that are well intentioned but in many places there can be a pattern of knocking it all down & rebuilding every 30-50 years. In other words, just as the trees start to get large, you cut them all down once more.
I am for a situation where we constantly plant new trees and 30 years later knock them down and plant new ones. Correct me if I am wrong, but younger trees grow faster and sequester more carbon.
Secondly, this attitude about not cutting trees is causing many trees from not getting planted. Because there are utilities that lie underneath and if they need to be repaired 15 years later, trees are in the way.
> Instead of cutting down trees and putting up buildings, how about cutting down buildings and putting up trees?
Yes, please. Living in NYC I have seen so many trees disappear. Every single remodel or development cuts down every green thing and paves over anything which can spawn life. It makes the neighborhood look bare revealing all the dirt and grime.
Berlin has 431k street trees. Toronto has 11 million trees (including presumably ravines and natural areas) - and I'm sure other cities have similar amounts. Why do you think Berlin has the most trees?
In German cities in my experience treets often seem more imposing or covering more space, maybe that's the difference as North American streets are much wider.
I think I may be wrong about Berlin. Googling around it does seem like Toronto and Johannesburg are close together (both around 10 million trees), but are the trees in Toronto planted or natural? In JHB most of the trees were planted.
On my street the local council has recently cut down 5 trees and replaced them with 2 tiny saplings. One is doing well. And the other is currently being used by some guy to hang his electric car charging cable!? I despair for humanity some times.
I bought this house 4 years ago and have since planted 5 trees on my property alone. And have convinced two neighbours to plant at least one.
As I get older (late 40’s) I find myself much more prone to speaking to people about incivilities such as this or littering, etc. Maybe I’m just starting to be a grumpy old man (get off my lawn), but I try to be polite and appeal to the greater good, not confrontational or preachy.
Also, one of the most rewarding things you can do is volunteer to plant trees in your city. At least in the US, cities often partner with local organizations for the manpower to plant and care for new trees. When I lived in San Jose, CA, my wife and I planted 3 trees one weekend along with a group who planted over 20 on 2 streets. The city provided the trees and fertilizer, the group provided the tools, and the volunteers did the digging and planting. We lived several blocks away and would go water the trees every week during the first few months to get them rooted. Almost 20 years later, we still go out of our way to visit “our” trees whenever we’re in the area.
No I haven't. But I have half a mind to place a sternly worded letter on their windscreen!
But what do you say? "Um. You shouldn't do that." Why? Because it's bad for the tree? "Have some respect for nature?" It's a difficult argument to support.
"Don't be stupid, ya moron." is really what I'd like to say.
Life is to short to accept every disrupting element others introduce.
Just ask him to come over here and look at something, then standing together on a 15 meter distance of the tree ask him wether his decorations add a useful element to the scenery.
Unbox the most ugly Christmas decorations you find on ebay. And supply the man an additional set of extras so from now on he can go ahead with a more professional gear set.
The machiavellian would record and post the prince glitter show on instagram and then burn $200 on instagram ad boost to a selective postal code area.
Next time your British nod will have super powers.
I worked on a project with Trees for Cities and Ealing Council a couple of years back, which tried to visualise the importance of urban trees. Data had been gathered to estimate the monetary value provided by trees and how much it would cost to replace them. It was pretty eye-opening for me. Link if interested: https://www.ealingitree.online/.
The claim is "Billions are saved on cooling costs because the trees keep the environment cooler due to (presumably) shade and evaporative-cooling".
Since the vast majority of buildings in London do not have AC, the savings are more theoretical than real.
There are also the thousands of people employed full time in the autumn to pick up leaves, and the people employed all winter to unblock drains blocked with tree detritus, and the springtime cutting of every tree and the associated road blockages and slowdowns... Those are very real costs.
Add to that the misery that tree pollen causes ~half the population... Having a headache, painful eyes, and blocked nose from april to july has got to hit productivity pretty badly!
I'd say the benefits on purely economic grounds aren't as clearcut as this article suggests.
Regarding pollen, it is not just trees, but also grasses and flowers.
Plus anti-histamine tablets are super-effective and cost literally a couple of pence per tablet from generics so you could spend perhaps £5 (1) to have enough hay fever tablets to last the entire summer and beyond (and probably free on the NHS if you can't afford £5) so I don't think it is quite such misery.
They're not super effective. I wish they were. I literally live in a different part of the world from where I've been born because I suffer from hayfever for half of the year there.
They do other maintenance work in the other seasons, but during the autumn, they form teams of people who brush leaves into piles, bag them, and then stick them in a garbage truck. I constantly wonder why they can't use a big vacuum cleaner to pick up leaves, but I guess it works out cheaper to do it by hand.
It's true other plants make pollen, but trees form by far the majority of the pollen issue [1]. Different types of tree produce pollen in different months, making a pretty consistent problem. Grasses on the other hand nearly all make pollen the same week. There aren't many other plants in London...
>There are also the thousands of people employed full time in the autumn to pick up leaves, and the people employed all winter to unblock drains blocked with tree detritus...
So grow pines and other evergreens they don't drop their leaves all at once like deciduous trees do in the fall.
Look on the bright side- leaf cleanup and tree pruning is ongoing economic activity that can't be outsourced. Mining coal or natural gas and manufacturing A/C units, on the other hand, definitely will be.
They spent a huge amount to install a non-native tree that is effectifly a stick and they died, replaced them again and they also died, finally replaced them with something that would last and they are just saplings. The greenway was effectively getting the middle of a busy road and putting in some concrete pathing which they painted green, few flower boxes that are mostly showing off soil and that cost millions.
So call me a cynical about some initiatives, but I've seen, experienced as thanks to my local council - paid for so many failed ones that to teh common lay person - lacked common sense, that when I see such reports, I just know they are not seeing the whole picture and are only used to push more expensive, ill-thought vanity projects by certain types of councils.
Same council who ignores flooding in some area's and would be best solved by planting some trees, yet they refuse as they are worried about additional leaf little that may clog up the roads. For those wondering - Kingston-Upon-Thames is the area's I'm referring about.
But if a council can cut down a large tree for dubious reasons and replace it with a couple of saplings that take decades to reach the same potential and in many cases, poorly chosen tree's that will die, they can trumpet their ego and say they have more trees than they cut down, yet reality shows that is far from the truth in results.
There are two parts in this history. One are the current problem with wood robbers that had increased in the last decade IMHO. Old trees in public parks can be chopped and selled. Most people is not aware on how valuable is a old tree, and how expensive is its wood
... and is a low risk operation. More profitable than robbing a bank, for sure. You chop a tree at 5am, put it in a truck, and ka-ching. You can tell later that the tree fell ill suddenly, was dying, was a danger, or tell similar excuses. Nobody will battle an eye. Cash and profit.
..................
The second part is the good one. Cities need to make gardens for their citizens. If you can afford it there are good reasons to start with the biggest tree available
For seller is good, the more expensive the tree, the more money that you can bill to the city.
For the buyer is good also. When spending public money, having instant results is a must. Valuable brownie points for the politicians in charge.
Moreover, you can't just put any tree in any location.
Cypress are survivors. Fit in narrow spaces and stand polluted areas and dry spells. Even if non native, are known not to be invasive, soft, non thorns at eye level, toxicity is not a problem, littering is not a big trouble, and are relatively cheap to buy and maintain. I would prefer to see a row of Amanogawa japanese cherries instead, but Cupressus is a reasonable choice for a city.
> Replaced third time by saplings.
No politician would plant a sapling for helping their successor in power ten years later. Not if can try with a big tree instead. But, after two fails, this is also a reasonable change of mind. Saplings stablish better in difficult places, specially when vandalism is not severe.
Not really in this case. The list of native fastigiata trees available is reduced. Yew would be the closer one, but can be very problematic in public spaces
Urban tree planting is great but there must be a better way of planting trees along pavements.
Everywhere they have been planted the roots have torn up the pavements sometimes causing them to mound over the roots which looks really unsightly and is often a trip hazard. Also on some pavements the trees cause bottlenecks because its too narrow for two people to pass eachother.
I recently moved back to New Orleans, which has tons of sidewalks that become obstacle courses when you are near the oak trees that fill the city. I thought it was annoying when I was a kid here but now that I've lived in more concrete-bound places it's a tradeoff I'm happy to make for more trees.
When there's multiple trees along most blocks, and something like a 25% chance the sidewalk will be buckled next to the tree, you get used to it and habitually scan the sidewalk every time you pass under a tree.
Passing them in a wheelchair is probably a bit more of a problem though; it's not uncommon to see people in powered wheelchairs/scooters going down a side street instead of an oak-lined boulevard's sidewalks.
Some trees root more deeply than spreading out horizontally. Simply leaving more room around the green strip helps too.
Brickwork sidewalk might bend a bit more smoothly than asphalt or concrete slabs... or at least it should be more repairable without tearing everything out.
> Also on some pavements the trees cause bottlenecks because its too narrow for two people to pass eachother.
This indicates that there's simply too little space allocated to the sidewalk + trees.
In my area's they did just that and called it a cycle path, yet no cyclists use it and the pathment is so narrow that in places that you can't get a wheelchair past without encroaching upon this cycle lane, that now sits pedestrians between cars and cyclists jammed in the middle, kinda why many cyclists don't use them.
Had they just said, cyclists can use pavements period - but pedestrians have priority - it would of been far better for all and way safer and cheaper than what we actually got.
One of and if not the best initiatives was the YouTube community rise to plant 20 million trees. Certainly the cost per tree planted beat any initiative government and local government have instigated.
Indeed, I grow my own trees from seeds collected locally and ninja plant them out in the area - not done many, but way better than buying some expensive tree sapling that's imported. I've suggested to my local MP about schools collecting seeds and doing the same, but alas it did not tick any PR box's for the MP who in question is busy banging on about brexit, same MP who I suggested a health service conscription service to tackle shortages and more so, educate people about health service - even if was two week placement of high-school students as they do with work placement. Shame that suggestion got ignored as well given hindsight of today's times.
What I have learned, if you really care and want to get something done, just do it as the time to fight bureaucracy will take longer and still be stuck at the starting line.
[EDIT ADD Spelling and sorry I sound a bit sour, but the angst is strong with hindsight]
How do you do it? Some seeds sprawn the next year.
I also educated a guy with a textile factory that has large western windows to plant some native fast growing deciduous trees (ash is my favourite due to good wind resistance) in front of them in orderto block the summer sun and install a white PU panel roof instead of spending a large sum of money on A/C. He only installed mechanical ventilation as it was sufficient.
The local council plants plane trees now instead of tilia but I don't like them that much after I was in London because of the irritating fluff that they shed around in May. We used to have a lot of chestnut, tilia, acer and some ash.
>How do you do it? Some seeds spawn the next year.
depends, some you have to pop into the freezer for a bit to kick them into earlier cycle, indeed, many need a frost to kick their biological clock into action. But yes, takes time, grow inside window ledge, repot, as they grow and after few years get to put into larger pot outside and climatise them for a year or two and then plant out when good size. It's a slow process and can't do huge amount, but every little helps and local seeds so used to conditions and by that, soil types and climate. I tend to focus on nut trees, ideally want to get some walnuts, but few hazelnuts, apples easy, same with cherry. Trees that also produce food and add to rummaging experience on walks.
But utter lack of walnut trees around my area, as all over the decades got turned into wood for use/abuse. Actually, lots of acorns/Oaks but few hazelnuts and the like, fair few apple and some pear tree's about, but general lack of all those really.
I also like to plant out sunflowers, chives, other herbs randomly here and there, though not done any mint, probably be irresponsible with that as the way it spreads, though i'd take mint of nettles and who wouldn't.
Yesterday I biked over to a friend and back, different routes except the first/last 200m, both routes as green-ish as possible in the city. Say 10km along tree-lined streets, through parks, etc, and a few km elsewhere. I don't think I passed even a single of those annoying root bumps, and from this I infer that whatever city department is responsible for planting the trees knows how to do it well.
It can be done, some cities succeed almost perfectly, "everywhere" isn't.
My experience with UK trees is that Victorian housing does not have foundation, so their roots can and do make the walls moving, crack up floors, etc. Cracks on the walls means bad insulation (apart unstable structure to live in), hence I am not sure the assessment in the article is thorough enough.
I am not sure what would be the solution to this, apart from demolishing the old buildings and build new ones up that satisfy modern standards.
Double glazing would already go a long distance in London. I would not blame the trees when a lot of houses have windows with cracks you can see outside through. Let alone the single glazing everywhere.
My landlord put in double glazing before I moved in, it is assuredly better than the previous situation - but there is still on hell of a draft coming from somewhere...
Have a look at the floor for draughts. Our old methods of construction were pretty shocking. Look out for gaps underneath the skirting boards. Our walls are usually a double skin of brick and there will be air bricks to allow the gap between to dry out. Then you have floor/ceiling joists, probably with gaps around their ends. On the joists you will have floorboards, again with gaps between them. On the boards you will probably have some rubbish underlay and then carpet. Around the edges the walls will be finished with skirting boards. Over time the floors will sag.
You only report "one" hell of a draught coming from somewhere. There will be lots of draughts!
Do your modern double-glazed window frames sit in wood paneling in a brick wall? It's likely the wood has shrunk over time, and there are drafts either between the windows and the wood, or between the wood and the brick.
Some Victorian houses don’t have foundations, but this is not the norm. There is often a problem with cracking, but this is often to do with the river plain that London is built on (many rivers are actually now subterranean now). Changes in water content of the soil has an undermining effect on foundations.
> Many local authorities were slow in adopting Model Bye-laws; even where they did, building control was fairly lax. This meant that the nature and quality of foundations varied considerably. The graphics below show typical foundations at the end of the 1800s. The depths varied according to circumstances but generally they were shallower than their modern counterparts.
This means, they are shallower than other parts of the world of the same era.
> The Victorians often didn’t use this method of construction for foundations and instead used to build shallow footings out of a course of 5-6 bricks in a ‘pyramid’ shape spreading the load across the ground and in some cases the footings are no more than 200mm’s deep.
> [...] The problems with the shallow foundations arise due to the shrinkage and heave of the clay soils that are found across London and the South East
So the roots. Energy-wise the lack of insulation on the foundation is also an issue. Heat can escape downwards as well. (And slugs, rats, spiders up, but that's an other story.)
My aunt and uncle's house has 1642 written on it, which was when it was last rebuilt from scratch. For the last few hundred years or so it has been simply patched with more mud, straw and horse piss. It too has no foundations to speak of unless you count the rather hard earth on which it stands. I tried smacking it with a lump hammer and once I'd stopped vibrating, I could not see a dent in it. One day I'll get a decent sized masonry bit out and see just how hard it really is but I suspect it is harder or at least tougher than the modern concrete base in my 1920s job.
Back on topic, we have a 50' walnut tree in our garden that we tend to. It gets a feed every other year. Next door is a 100+ acre park, mostly woodland: oak, ash, beech, horse chestnut etc. It is really starting to look lovely after a 10 year plan to get rid of the laurels, which were planted about 150 odd years back but have turned out to be invasive, poisonous and left unchecked nearly took over completely.
Noise reduction (better quality sleeping time), improving psychological well being of citizens, and pollution cleaning are another economically relevant services.
Trees are not free, but even taking in mind the need to remove litter and manage it, they will improve the economy in a city. At least as long you choose wisely the right species.
One of the real problems with tree planting is that humans don’t comprehend the lifetime of a tree intuitively - hence chopping down a heritage tree and replacing with 10 saplings. It takes a couple of centuries for a tree to reach full maturity. At 100 years they’re adolescent. Combine this with our lack of appreciation for the “network effects” of forests and we are exceptionally neglectful of these incredible life forms.
Highly, highly recommend the book The Hidden Life of Trees
Trees become mature at different rates, which also depends on climate. In temperate climate with sub-zero winter, a fast growing species, like poplar trees and spruces, will take 10 years to start producing flower.
And while a yellow poplar lives on average 250 years, the hybrid poplar live 50 years. White spruce easily live pass 300 years, while black spruce seldom reach 300 years.
Edit: network effect has nothing to do with a tree maturation or lifespan, but everything to do with creating an ecosystem. A single row of trees in the city creates an local ecosystem. The Houston medical area is a good example of that: https://news.rice.edu/2019/09/06/pain-in-the-asp-rice-ecolog...
I mean, that heavily depends on the kind of tree. London’s plane trees should have a very long lifespan, but at the moment the oldest will be around 300 years old, and most nowhere near that. For things like silver birch, the life expectancy is firmly under 100 years.
Depends on the tree species, but the general idea is understandable. For a city avoiding the pressure to prune to death would save a lot in replacement expenses. Workers of course will push to prune as much as possible (they bill each time), and often will kill old trees for this
In my city, landlords gang up on trees with see click fix. They express fake concern over power line proximity, just make up stories about dead branches or rot, etc.
It saves them a few hours of labor to pick up leaves.
slightly related: bees are in decline and worth hundreds of millions to UK economy being pollinators for major exports apples/cider. hence the need for more protected and greener spaces. I read somewhere that bees provide more money for the UK than the royal family
No, not even true. The Government makes a profit on the Crown Estates, the Civil List is entirely covered - and MUCH less than say the French pay on their President. And we haven't even started on revenues generated from tourism, etc.
The Crown Estates would be public land, and without the royal family we could open several large buildings as museums — and charge entry to tourists if we want to profit.
We'd also be free of some racists, a sex abuser, and a meddling old man, who claim to represent the people of a democracy but have never stood for election.
The crown estates are not owned by the public, they are owned by the royal family. To transfer them to public would need the government to give the royal family a massive pay out.
Cutting down London’s Trees Costs the City Billions
You can define normal how you want, but my way comes from seeing trees as normal. The old headline seems to treat lack of trees as normal.
Instead of cutting down trees and putting up buildings, how about cutting down buildings and putting up trees?