Urban trees reveal income inequality | Hacker News Reader

Urban trees reveal income inequality

persquaremile.com

117 pointspg78 comments

Just a comment about definitions for the uninitiated: the term "luxury good" is a technical term in economics. We use something called "income elasticity" to compare goods which is simply the ratio of (% change in quantity/% change price). If something has an income elasticity > 1 or 2 (depending on the textbook), its sufficient to call something a luxury good, regardless of what other connotations exist about the good. It doesn't mean that its a rich person's good in any particular way(s)--it just means that as income rises, quantity demanded rises disproportionately.

OP isn't doing anything wrong. Just thought I would drop some ECO101 for the interested.

So methylated spirits is presumably not a luxury good, I would assume ;-)

The technical term is 'inferior good'. McDonalds, Ramen, and nail polish remover as a beverage, would probably all be inferior goods.

A few years ago in San Francisco's Tenderloin, some in the neighborhood agitated against more trees because they risked attracting rich people:

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sectionfront/life/san-fr...

Just... Wow. People have died - been massacred - fighting against ghettoisation. And for these people it's about the "ambience". Can't they see that safety and gentrification are two sides of the same coin?

It doesn't matter how safe a neighbourhood is if you and your kids and your friends can't afford to live there anymore thanks to urban gentrification.

But what other than the people makes the area unsafe? The only way the area can become safe is if different people live in it. So it would seem their stated aims differ from their real ones...

That sounds like a problem that should be solved by some means other than fighting against safety, beautification, etc.

Say, pushing for a strong housing authority to ensure mixed-income housing.

A strong housing authority would be socialism. Converting urban housing from rental units to affordable condos is un-American.

I'm partly joking, of course, but you'd be surprised at the epithets and viciousness that can be thrown around if someone dares disturb the very, very classist segments of the population who participate mostly loudly in municipal governments.

Taipei, Taiwan has planted a lot of trees over the last thirty years,

http://www.amcham.com.tw/content/view/3313/

and as wealth has increased there from third-world to newly industrialized levels, tree cover has improved immensely. The predominant look of Taipei and the surrounding suburban cities in Xin Taibei (formerly, Taipei County) is tall buildings, but the trees at street level

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2011/07/04/2...

are quite pleasant to look at, and have improved residential neighborhoods quite a lot as they have grown over the past few decades.

Many cities in the United States Midwest have had to reforest because of the ravages of Dutch Elm Disease,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_elm_disease

and Minneapolis has had to be especially intentional about reforestation after losing thousands of elm trees in the 1970s.

http://www.minneapolisparks.org/default.asp?PageID=28

http://www.minneapolisparks.org/default.asp?PageID=926

http://www.na.fs.fed.us/urban/treespayusback/vol1/ufore%20mp...

It is very satisfying to look across the Twin Cities from an airplane window or from the observation level of a tall skyscraper building and see mostly treetops in what are actually urban neighborhoods.

For people who live a long time on the same lot, or who at least have the chance to see the same lot after moving away, little is more satisfying than watching a tree grow up. I remember planting trees with my late dad in 1962 for the newly built house where I mostly grew up. I moved away in 1971, but now live not far away, and can see trees that I remember as saplings now thick and tall and shading the entire house.

Not sure what your criteria was for your list, but something I found interesting is this fact about the city I live in: "Despite the relatively dry climate, Johannesburg has over ten million trees,[22][dead link] and it is now the biggest man-made forest in the world" [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannesburg

Tree cover can be a bad thing for houses, though. Besides the obvious of branches falling, my friend just bought a new house where there are major repairs that need to be done because of the trees planted around it.

Some of the trees are big enough for the roots to cause damage to the concrete in the walkway, garage, and foundation. The biggest issue, though, is the rot on the roof. Too many trees means not enough sunlight on the roof means moisture builds up and rots. Houses need sunlight, and when you pack houses in on 1/4 acre lots with no yard space to speak of then pile trees around, you end up with major damages when the trees grow.

My argument is more for less-dense neighborhoods (or replace individual houses with shared housing like condos or apartments) than it is for not planting trees. Residential neighborhoods and subdivisions are not ideal conditions for the environment, no matter how many trees you plant.

One of my reasons for not accepting Google's offer of a research position in Mountain View: "There aren't enough trees".

I'm pretty sure the per-capita income of Mountain View is considerably higher than the per-capita income of Vancouver, but being surrounded by and infused with trees certainly makes Vancouver feel wealthier.

Palo Alto has plenty of trees—and not coincidentally, I believe its per capita income is even higher than Mountain View's.

Yes, I saw some of Palo Alto a few years later and thought it seemed much nicer. About all I saw when I flew down to interview was the Google campus and the highway between there and SFO.

I don't know of any city that could or should be judged based on the freeway from its airport.

Having said that, there are nice suburbs around Mountain View and Palo Alto but they still lacks the feeling that richer suburbs in other places have. Atherton and Hillsborough are a bit closer but they are insanely expensive.

I don't know of any city that could or should be judged based on the freeway from its airport.

Vancouver doesn't have a freeway from its airport, but it does have a train. If you were going to make judgments, this leads itself to a rather accurate one.

But yes, my impression of lacking trees was more from the Google campus than the freeway.

Allied Arts in Menlo Park - much cheaper version of Atherton.

Singapore is one such city. The East Coast Parkway is about as tree lined and beautiful as any drive can be from the airport to city center. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Coast_Parkway

Palo alto, full of trees and porches.

When I read things like this it makes we wonder: Are there more trees in an area because there are more rich people? Or are there more rich people because there are more trees?

When you have more money you have more options for where to live. Given the choice, I think many would choose to live in a place with more green space than less green space.

Both. People seek out trees, which drives up the prices of houses on tree-lined streets. But rich people also have more resources to spare to plant and protect trees.

Also, rich people tend to stay in the same place for longer, so they have more incentive to nurture small trees in the anticipation of enjoying big trees later in life -- pretty much the "owners make better neighbours than renters" issue.

Yes. I think owning versus renting/tenanting/being housed may have a lot to do with this. Why go the the effort of planting trees and spending your time on your landlords garden.

This is exactly why yard service is included with my rental home. I want to know my yard is being taken care of. However, in the 13 years I've been a home owner... I've never planted a tree. I actually had one removed during a backyard makeover.

In the US most of the trees you see in residential areas are actually species that are native to Europe, meaning that most of them were planted by a rich person at some point.

I agree. This article smells like yet another correlation-not-causation victim.

I'm a bit sleep deprived due to children, but the first thing that pops into my head is "primates like trees". I guess as a seed, we haven't fallen too far from that tree, so to speak.

In fact, primates like the intersection of trees and grasslands - open fields provide visibility, trees provide safety. ...not just for the primates, but for all sorts of smaller critters, which go by the name "food".

Lets get a link to the scientific article https://fp.auburn.edu/sfws/YaoqiZhang/demand%20for%20urban%2.... This looks like very well researched. It would be neat to see research it in other european countries or even Canada.

I planted two plants at two corners of my home here in Bangalore, around 10 years back. Today they are large trees, I don't live in a area that you can describe as only where rich people stay. But you don't need to be rich to plant a tree and watch it grow. Its not like maintaining a garden. You don't have to spend a dime. And most trees don't require much maintenance(That is how they grow in the forest). So its not a rich man's thing by any measure.

Apart from the season of Autumn, where you need to broom out the leaves the tree has no other need to tending to. But the benefits are enormous. I go on the top of my home during the nights and its always cool in all seasons. There is always shade, early in the morning birds chirp and its very pleasant to hear that.

My home looks like an Oasis in the middle of an desert as there no trees around. Kids play under it, People like to stop for quick rest. Even from far things look green and fine.

Its only an excuse that rich people stray around green places. The fact is anybody can plant a tree. It doesn't take money to do it.

And if your area supports evergreen trees, leaves aren't an issue. It does usually take a little money upfront, but otherwise, yes, it's free.

In my experience, evergreen trees suck. They still drop needles and cones. The evergreen in my backyard killed the grass underneath it. We removed it last year and the lawn came back.

They're fine for forests and hedges, but as a shade tree for a yard, they're substandard to the maples and elms we have.

I don't think our trees are even similar to yours, and our evergreens don't seem to acid the hell out of the earth like yours! New Zealand doesn't have any deciduous trees I'm aware of... They are usually quite 'dark' though and make somewhat too much shade if not pruned.

I don't know what the situation is in Bangalore. Where I live in the US, if I planted a tree in the corner of the yard of my rental apartment, it would most likely be mowed over by the landscaping crew. If it grew up large enough to be noticeable, the same crew would probably chop it down. I'm not wealthy enough to own property where I can plant a tree where it would grow unhindered.

From the sound of things, you own your home. It's a nice place where even a person of moderate means can acquire a small, modest piece of property and start improving it as their own.

I planted the tree on the road.

From another poster on this thread, I got to know that they don't allow this in the US.

This is sad.

It's fascinating how subtly our environment reflects our livelihoods. For example, I look out of my window and see two, make that three trees. I advance fifteen minutes up to a much more affluent district, lo and behold, many trees and well manicured verges. These same areas are maintained by the same council and the same taxes. I also had never noticed those differences before.

The more affluent area will be paying much more council tax, the rates are calculated on property prices. It's the same "pool" of tax, sure, but it's in no way the "same tax".

Not where I live. I live in a largish town called Ipswich, in the UK. Now, we have a wildly diverging GDP demographic, we have people from the poorest 5% and people from the richest 5% of the population and the council tax rate only goes up to £3,200 from just over £1,000. When you're earning £70,000, £3,000 isn't a lot of money. When you're earning £16,000, £1,000 is.

Are the people paying 3x the tax getting their bins emptied 3x as often? I'm guessing not... Not to mention that the poorest won't be paying any tax anyway (since their income is in the form of benefits). Yet they get their bins emptied same as everyone else. There's no correlation between the tax you pay and the services you're entitled to.

Actually, most benefits count as taxable income in the UK, it's just the tax is taken before payment. And no there isn't a correlation, I'm not saying there is. I'm pointing out that, considering the tax band isn't proportionally that much higher for the more affluent, there's significant divergence in the level of maintenance in these areas, when all these areas should be maintained without discrimination.

Where do benefits come from? The taxpayer. Taxing them is just shuffling money between two govt budgets.

Indeed. So there's no small degree of irony in taxing people on their tax funded benefits.

Anecdote of an outlier: An "historic" and rather well-to-do New England town familiar to me recently removed all of its trees from a long section of the main street along the town green. This section of the street has many shops, and all I can imagine was that shop owners wanted fewer obstructions in front of their stores. However, the result as I see it, was to make the area much less pleasant to stroll through, and more barren when seen from afar.

Urban trees help create a sense of shelter and alter the character of light (shade, filtered, and dappled), significantly lowering the temperature of otherwise paved areas. They can create a more park-like atmosphere, encouraging people to seek out a place and linger in it, enjoying its relaxing qualities. So one would think this would not only be a benefit for residential neighborhoods, but also retail/commercial ones. Downtown Palo Aalto for instance.

But in this case, low tree density correlates to a high degree of conservative small town environmental and architectural ignorance and/or political ineptitude. The rich folks cut the trees down for one reason or another.

>Though like many of Chicago’s boasts that number was probably inflated by including replacement trees.

My hackles go up whenever I see someone write "probably." If Mayor Daley did one thing right, he spent a lot of money improving the greenscape in the city. The most obvious change in the past 20 years (in my opinion) is the former site of the Lincoln Park Gun Club (http://www.lincolnparkconservancy.org/diversy_point.html). The article mentions that they removed 11 trees and planted 105. What used to be a fairly empty and stark promontory is now a glade of nice shade trees (http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM7G6Z_A_Signal_of_Peace_...).

Daley also added center lane parkways along Chicago's wider streets that add to the shade of the city.

I don't doubt that there are a replacement trees in the total, but I once heard Daley admonish an employee for replacing good trees with "buggy whips" just to get the numbers up.

> My hackles go up whenever I see someone write "probably."

I'd rather have someone put error bars on their knowledge with "probably" than emit a shorter, more confident sounding (but more wrong) sentence that omits the "probably".

Do trees really cost that much to a city? I am genuinely curious. You wouldn't think so, as they kinda take care of themselves. But maybe there are some maintenance costs I am not considering.

Do crappy cities hire crappy city planners that cut down all the trees?

Maybe it's that the richer coast cities happen to have climates that can grow more trees than the more mountainous or desert-like areas?

Do trees really cost that much to a city?

Trees get in the way. If you're building a road or a sewer system or other underground services, you usually can work around trees, but it's often going to be easier and cheaper to knock them down. (The same goes for building houses, which is why many cities have bylaws restricting the ability of developers to cut down trees.)

they need constant care and monitoring - especially after heavy storms or bad weather of any sort, really.

The tree lined boulevards in my city routinely disrupt traffic after monsoon rains - most are close to 40 years old, and every so often will shed a branch or three onto the road.

Depends on the tree and type of maintenance. Some monitoring and directional pruning goes a long way. In general the larger the tree the more maintenance and monitoring is required.

Besides what other commenters said -- street trees have to be pruned. If ey're not maintained and cause damage, the ci can be sued. And their roots can destroy sidewalks, sewers, and nearby roads (depending on species, placement, etc.).

Not saying I like the reasoning, but that's what the city says.

Based on observing my neighbors, I have come to believe that as one gets older, one tends to cut down trees and put concrete in, as a way to reduce maintenance and general loose ends and possibility for trouble. The city is that tendency writ large.

This isn't universally true, especially in climates where trees grow naturally. Oftentimes, the poorest neighborhoods in a city are among the oldest, and thus the trees have had the most times to mature and grow.

For example, look at <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.684543,-73.948116&spn.... Bedford-Stuyvesant is one of the oldest neighborhoods, and was once wealthy. Now it is one of the poorest neighborhoods in inner Brooklyn, but the trees have grown large with age, and that makes it one of the greenest neighborhoods from above. Vacant lots even grow verdant with age.

Bed-Stuy is also one of the neighborhoods currently going through the most gentrification in NYC. Other tree-lined, brownstone neighborhoods, closer to Manhattan may have been first (Fort Greene, Park Slope, Clinton Hill, etc), but Bed-Stuy is the place currently dealing with it.

Sure, neighborhoods that don't have trees and brownstones get targeted -- look at what happened to Williamsburg -- but that's largely due to proximity to the city. Trees get planted after the fact in this case.

If Bed-Stuy wasn't beautiful, it'd be a lot harder of a sell for the gentrifiers.

Bushwick and Williamsburg don't have particularly beautiful architecture-- just lots of vinyl-sided wood frame tenements. Williamsburg is already as expensive as parts of Manhattan while Bushwick is gentrifying rapidly too. Just about all of Brooklyn within close range of Manhattan is either already very expensive or moving in that direction.

Of course where richer people live there are more trees. People like trees. Trees are nice. Rich people can afford to live in nicer place than poor people. They can afford to waste space on nice trees instead of building cheap condos at the same place. It's all banalities, not worth writing at length about.

However, the last part of the article suggests that if you plant trees you could make bad neighborhood better. It looks like a wrong causality direction mistake. Rich people wear expensive clothes, but if you put expensive suit on a poor man, it wouldn't make him rich. Poorer cities won't be fixing by putting trees in them, this looks like a classic cargo cult thinking. It may make certain place a bit nicer, but won't change much.

Having lived in a very poor area of Chicago for a while and moving to a fairly affluent area I observed that the affluent neighborhoods get certain services because they demand them from the city. The poorer neighborhoods tend to have somewhat of a "leave us alone" attitude which unfortunately the city is all too happy to oblige. I know there are financial aspects at play as well, but at least from what I observed there definitely was a "squeaky wheel" aspect to receiving city services.

Relevant architectural project proposed for São Paulo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12588351@N02/sets/7215762319266...

Too bad that it will take a long time before the rich in SP realize the value of trees in the city.

Looking out my home office window, I see nothing but trees. There's a thousand feet of trees in any direction before you get to the next house.

But I seriously doubt my neighborhood has become uber-wealthy. More like we just live in the woods. :)

I say that not to be snarky, but as a way of questioning the methodology being used here. How do you classify "urban"? What about locations where trees grow naturally? Is the relationship causal or just random correlation? How about cities that were built in a loose fashion in a naturally-wooded area? Those in the desert? And so on.

I note that one study showed if you wanted to find the most dangerous parts of cities, measure the density of liquor stores. I guess next time I'm in a city with no trees and a lot of liquor stores I'll know to be really careful.

That's not true in Australia. There's a 'plague' of poisoned trees to shore up property prices, especially at vantage points (water/city/etc). However, it only goes as far as to clear the view. This forces the council to begrudgingly overlook tree protection laws to take down 'public risk' trees.

Then there's councils maintaining power lines. Who are trimming costs by cutting trees down to half height. So, there would be those grotesque thick trunks with small branches coming out sides. They appear so ugly that residents are having them cut down and removed.

Edit: Here's a well-grown American example: http://bullcityrising.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/...

That's only where trees and powerlines are colocated. There is still a demand for greenspace that runs along wealth lines in Australia. Poor areas will have some trees, but not like the density of middle-class or wealthy areas.

In my city, you can correlate street trees with bad or declining neighborhoods.

Absentee landlords see trees as a nuisance -- you need to rake leaves in the fall, and they generally believe that the roots will block up sewers, etc.

Trees are healthy for human psychology. I'm glad cities are planting them.

Strange, though, how different perspectives can change perceptions. The photograph in the article is said to depict a wealthy city with a large number of trees, but just looking at the way all those cars are parked in the road, slowing traffic and posing a constant threat of a crash resulting from a moment's distraction makes me feel claustrophobic.

I was just having a conversation today about whether you could reduce the crime rate in an area just by planting more trees.

What's the reasoning there?

That trees have a calming effect on populations and create a feeling of comfort and provision. Also, in hot places, if you remove the stressor of hot concrete and more heat from above, you might help people feel more relaxed.

Hm, yeah, trees to make me feel more placid and less oppressed than concrete, you're right. I wonder if, with less anger/feeling of being trapped, would-be criminals would rationally see other ways out of their crappy situations.

I live in Hamilton, Ontario, which isn't reknowned for being high income, but certainly has a lot of trees even in lower income areas surrounding the downtown, especially compared to a lot of Canadian cities. Exceptions are out there I guess.

The Casey Trees foundation in Washington, DC, is working to improve the canopy here. I've helped out at a couple of plantings in our neighborhood (which is admittedly well off). The District government does plant a lot of curb trees.

Am I the only one thinking how cool it would be to map income inequality using computer vision on satellite photographs of cities by counting trees or greenness?

I've actually been working on this a couple days since first seeing the PerSquareMile post...

I guess the cat's out of the bag now, here's my proof of concept:

http://sunspeck.com/urban-forest-computer-vision/

There is a bit of extant literature on this, also, you'll see the link in there. Pretty interesting.

New Hampshire is 84% covered in trees. I wonder if that helped us rank #1 "Most Livable State" 6 years running?

People with money prefer to live in places that are nice.

This is a new insight?

Or does living in a nice place drive people to succeed financially? hmmm...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/

There is a difference between "You know, X is probably true, it just seems obvious" and "Here is empirical evidence for X."

Meanwhile in LA people think high palms are trees.

As of 2006 anyway, LA was shifting away from Palms https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/us/26palm.html

feels like they just gave up palms and not replaced with anything then.

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