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Comment by oooyay | Hacker News Reader

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:

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-06/documents/ur...

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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.

> Florida was hell even at the same temperatures

Humidity may have played a part.

Georgia is not a dry place…unless op mean Georgia in the Middle East.

Tiny correction: I think Georgia, the country, is not considered as part of the Middle East. If anything, it’s more in Europe than the middle east.

geographically it's in Asia,come on people

apologies, it's on both continents (but like 95% Asia)

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..

So instead of studies they should just, what, have someone walk the entire city to identify these spots?

That’s not remotely as crazy as you make it sound. This sort of census is used to count all sorts of things. In the case of NYC street trees, it’s been done three times before: https://www.nycgovparks.org/trees/treescount

The tree census is not “someone walking around identifying trees”, it is a study. It takes a ton of organization, methodology, data collection and management. It’s an excellent example of why you need an actual study even to collect obvious data like “that’s a tree!”

but committee members will ask questions about the effects of their budget.

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 :/

The trees also protect pedestrians though.

Portland is great about this already and there is glaring room for improvement.

I still don’t get why we didn’t do more to support Friends Of Trees.

Something similar was done in New York as well for those curious: https://council.nyc.gov/data/heat/

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