Cities need more trees | Hacker News Reader

Cities need more trees

herman.bearblog.dev

293 pointsHermanMartinus163 comments

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/fileadmin/_processed_/...

https://healthyurbanliving.utrecht.nl/our-vision-for-utrecht...

https://aiph.org/floraculture/news/utrecht-is-crowned-the-ne...

I live there as well, and while I'm sure it could be worse, it's nothing compared to Johannesburg. I would like to see much more green throughout the city. Hopefully they will keep up the trend.

Well they are still in transition. My street is next. They will plant quite a bit more trees and plant areas. Looking forward to them :)

Same in Zurich, where the city tries to establish a “Schwammstadt”. But the tree growth is actually negative, because on private properties people are chopping down their trees to build lucrative housing.

If you look at bellevue i personally think it's disgusting, that loveless massive sechseleutenplatz, lot's of cars always using the horn, what a waste of that iconic place constricted between traemli and a always busy street, tbh even Delhi is less stressful, let alone Vienna.

EDIT: Do you mean Schwanstadt right? That lovely smell of birdshit in the sommer plus the massive stink of piss and puke after (and up to 10 days) streetparade is the pure soul of Zurich ;)

No, he means "schwammstadt" (sponge city), the concept idea that you need to create the capacity to soak up excess rainfall and store it like a sponge instead of relying on drainage entirely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponge_city

Which isn't a bad idea generally, but for cities like Zurich (and its sister city Geneva which is the same also in this regard) there isn't much need - it sits at the end of a massive lake, most of the city center isn't much higher than lake itself.

Effect of the lake subsides somewhat with distance form it, but it definitely creates its own micro-climate thats always colder and more humid than further away from it. To have more high trees that prevent all that tarmac, concrete and stone from heating up during day is definitely a plus, but these cities are not some scorched Phoenix, AZ equivalent.

Berlin, one of the leading cities in Germany on those concepts is located on two rivers, plenty of canals and between a few lakes. Hamburg is another very active place and it's close to the seaside, with a huge river and plenty of water in the city. A lot of concepts refer back to city planning that Kopenhagen started after a massive rainfall event in 2011 - a city which is fairly flat, has a large river front and plenty of canals.

Still, there's need to evaluate such city planning concepts because the lakes and rivers do not solve all of the problems associated with heavy rainfalls and drought cycles. They do nothing to handle the runoff if you get massive rainfalls in a short period of time because the water management gets overwhelmed. Also, city trees do not benefit substantially from the high ground water level and still suffer in drought.

So while not all of the concepts ideas may be applicable to Berlin, Hamburg, Kopenhagen, Zurich or Geneva, concepts like green roofs, local water storage etc. are still required to respond to the incread frequency of high rainfall events and increasing summer temperatures.

I'm so old I can still remember when Sechseleuten Square was green grass, now replaced with searing heat assemblers of stone....so even the city is working against that sponge thing, but yeah it sounds good from a politician's mouth.

It's a relatively novel concept, though the problems of replacing open surfaces with stone slabs and asphalt could have been obvious decades ago :(

Ah, but you see, stone slabs and asphalt cost nothing to maintain. /s

(...Even this is, of course, untrue, but it seems true when you're only paying attention to the next year or so.)

Just 17 milion swiss franks made out of "Valser Quarzit" and a "fountain" that needs constant maintenance because it has to be drinking quality instead of lake-water, just look at that sh*t:

https://aquatransform.ch/projects/sechselaeutenplatz-opernha...

EDIT: But please don't waste energy otherwise (your politician)

Zürich needs Lärmblitzer against pointless revving and honking.

Or a bridge/tunnel before bellvue, and make the whole bellvue+niederdoerfli up to hauptbahnhof carfree...just imagine that! But yeah you are right with those Lärmblitzer too.

that made me want to live there lol

I live at the boundary between city and forests and in summer the temperature drop is really 'incredible'. The amount of energy wasted by urban areas is as much so. But at the same time it's nice because we can restore more trees for shade easily

I live in foothills of a lower range of hills (European Jura), and it has numerous effects. The air is normally blowing down the mountains towards us in the evening (katabatic wind), so it doesn't matter how hot the day was, evenings are pleasantly cool and night gets colder than expected. This wind also cools hot surfaces pretty effectively.

Even just entering a dense natural forest during the day, one can sense drop in temperature around 3-4C during summer, and increase in humidity during dry periods.

Lived in French Jura for 5 years. It is so beautiful. And I am not the only one to have noticed. The Last Man or Frankenstein have also the Jura mountains as landscape.

I miss that place... (except its prices)

> katabatic wind

I've noticed this while doing evening walk, I didn't know it was a named phenomenon.

Paragliders like me (or similar sports) have to be very familiar with meteorology and wind, its the most important but largely invisible force that can literally make you or break you.

I love that overreach expected by a passion like that, meteorology is fascinating to engineer in me and its effects are very much visible every day and affect us all.

Since I've been bike commuting I've become more in touch with climate. For the simple need of avoiding rain. You start to pay attention to wind, direction, clouds .. it's strange cause you have to think more but it's also funny because you're sharper and smarter in a way. And that's just noob / surface level :)

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.

Sounds nice but it seems to be all at the cost of personal freedom of movement. That's a shame.

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 grows.

In contrast, Mexico City has an almost anarchist version of urban greenery. Trees overflow streets and side walks. Yes, there are issues from dealing with the urban greenery, but the city is incredibly pleasant to walk in. Also, despite being an incredibly noisy city, trees and buildings mute out a lot of the noise.

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.

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).

Mexico City is one of the largest cities in the world. Five people out of 21 million is nothing. Sure, every death is tragic, but there are a lot more efficient ways to spend time and money preventing deaths than tree trimming.

Five deaths in the Bay Area from one storm, two in San Francisco (with a population around 800,000). There were other tree related deaths last year. More to the point, the trees that the city is actively removing are old, mature ficus trees that present a variety of risks (e.g. sidewalks, sewer and other underground utilities), overhead (e.g. public transit) wires.

Too bad ficus are easily the densest canopy tree I’ve seen in california

On the other hand, trees cool down the area so having lot of them should lead to fewer heat-strokes. Last week we hit 95F in my area and I wouldn't be able to walk my dog if not for the trees.

Is not an easy decision. Politicians can be sued if a branch falls over somebody, but can get rid easily of the ten thousands of kills a year by contamination on air and water. Of course somebody being crushed by a tree is a real tragedy, but if the same people would have a heart attack because nitrogen emissions are out of the charts, or they get ill by asthma and can't work, would not reach the news.

An interesting question is: Have people trees because is rich, or they are richer because they had trees? (and this will save a lot of money each year on energy bills, food and even psychologists). Trees are a tool to fight poverty. The problem is how to made the poor people respect them.

For an opposing view, look at what happened during the freeze in Austin, Texas for an example of policies that allow for minimal tree pruning.

It was a significant issue that caused the city an incredible amount of damage. Electric was shut down for days, cars were destroyed, houses had trees fall on them, etc.

Might still be worth it, but an interesting data point nonetheless.

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.

Walkable green streets are not a marginal gain in my book. It is time we make our cities pleasant to live in.

Tell you what, you enjoy your Mumbai style wire canopy, I'll pay more to live in a place where they bury the lines and tree branches and sky are the only things over my head.

Mumbai has mostly underground utilities, only broadband lines tend to be strung from building to building.

Root penetration is a minimal problem in most cases, sure it does break things sometimes but its probably not as bad as you're making out.

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.

Chances are they did it decades ago when labor was far cheaper and continued to expand the system the entire time.

This is the standard for many cities in the northeast. Power lines are underground.

I’ve only seen it done for suburban tract development, never retrofitted to an existing large city. Do you have examples that aren’t a suburban tract? Just curious how it was implemented as the expenses are usually quoted to be astronomical

Center City Philadelphia has a series of squares fro green space and they are laid out in such a way that one can chart a course through the squares to navigate on foot.

"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 curve, which makes streets safer for pedestrians (43k deaths a year in USA from cars)

>From NotJustBikes channel, trees and bushes can be used to obscure road visibility, which naturally forces drivers to slow down at a curve, which makes streets safer for pedestrians

This is dumb. The same way wrapping cars in bubble wrap would be dumb but also make the cars safer. Most of the ideas in that channel are just insane emotional propaganda that make everyones lives worse because people don't understand geography or refuse to build properly.

>43k deaths a year in USA from cars

Not from people being ran over on the sidewalk...

American suburban streets are built like literal highways and then people are surprised people don't respect the speed limit.

It's not dumb, the easier to drive fast, the more people will do.

It's dumb. They're not built like highways. The highways are built like highways.

What do you propose for reducing car fatalities and accidents?

Things that only reduce car fatalities and accidents. Not things that reduce something beneficial and have the benefit of removing instances of harm since the benefit came with risks.

> This is dumb. The same way wrapping cars in bubble wrap would be dumb but also make the cars safer.

I doubt that would work, but if it did, why exactly would it be "dumb"?

> Most of the ideas in that channel are just insane emotional propaganda

Nah, most the ideas in that channel are the output of decades of empirical research on road/street safety by Dutch government agencies.

This video [1] from another channel describes how Dutch legal reforms in the early 90's enabled this evidence-based planning by correcting incentives and dramatically simplifying the regulatory framework.

1. https://youtu.be/b4ya3V-s4I0

>I doubt that would work, but if it did, why exactly would it be "dumb"?

You don't see why bubble wrapping cars would be dumb? Lol.

>Nah, most the ideas in that channel are the output of decades of empirical research on road/street safety by Dutch government agencies.

Yes, and the channel targets the US... not the Netherlands. They're not even remotely similar. Emotional propaganda is all it is.

I don't really care about what the Dutch are doing when discussing the US.

In Australia power companies will butcher any tree that gets close to overhead powerlines. Understandable, but result is an ugly streetscape and very little opportunity for green spaces outside parks.

Australian greenscapes in public areas is fine. It's just that people's land is now devoid of trees because of:

1. extra work all year. 2. solar panels 3. roots

There is nowhere in Australia where the government has cheaped out on greenery on public land. But home owners definitely hate trees. Go take a look through time of housing on Google maps.

An unkempt mess of trees and grass and roots doesn't sound nice to live in, even if you love nature.

> has an almost anarchist version of urban greenery

I actually just street view'd Mexico city and it looks like this isn't even remotely true and you mislead me. Their street foliage is quite well manicured apart from the larger tree branches and power line mixup.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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 surprised when I saw any indication of nature at all. Perhaps it’s just me and what I’m used to, but the only spot I visited that felt really relaxing was up around Griffith Observatory.

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.

"only" 90 minutes

Might as well rent a small plane.

The change of landscape from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara always gives me prehistoric or jurassic vibes for some reason.

Flying into LA from Europe and seeing slabs of reflecting concrete and buildings strech out for miles into the horizon from the desert really does give you the feeling that you are seeing the future of the climate apocalpyse in the present. As Gibson says, the future is already here it's just unevenly distributed.

And then you drive north and you run into vegetation that wouldn't be out of place in a dinosaur movie.

In that sense, Santa Barbara is nice but what exactly is "cool" sbout it? Americans awkward relationship with class is kind of in full view there frankly. There is almost no normal social interaction between the residents and the Latino blue collar community that prop up everyone's gardens and landscapes.

Have you ever taken a bus around town in Santa Barbara? It's like, "Oh, so this is where the real people are." Don't get me wrong, there's lots of interesting and nice people that live in Santa Barbara but the lack of cross-over is a little depressing. In Europe, you can be living in an nice expensive place in the city and run into the guy that cuts your hair at the corner barbershop at a music festival and hang out together with their friends the rest of the day.

Also with the exception of downtown Santa Barbara, like most of the US, it's incredibly anti-pedestrian. Make the mistake of google mapping a spot 20 min walk away and you'll find yourself on the highway walking for half an hour cause all the residents take short cuts through private property.

I lived in Santa Barbara for 10 years. There's a thriving counterculture and a vibrant art and music community. The richie riches have their Montecito/Hope Ranch/etc supermansions, but the spirit of the place is bohemian.

As for transit, I can tell you from personal experience that it's a biking city. Busses have front and back bike racks and since the whole city is on a slope you can coast from uptown to downtown easily with the expectation that you'll be able to ride a bus back up.

The vibe is uber rich bohemian, sure. Everything is relative -- to most outsiders SB proper is itself richie riches, it is literally 20-30 min walk fron SB coastal road to Montecito. I don't mind taking advantage of the nice "bohemenian" shops when I'm there but have you noticed how many emptied out shops there were on state street the past year? It definately gives me "Let me open my dream antique/clothing store using my family/partner's money and ride it out as far as our budget allows" vibes.

Also, compared to Europe the ocean is objectively garbage for swimming (no shade for the surfing or what not). But there is little alternative in the entire US I guess so there's that.

(not the one that downvoted you by the way)

Los Angeles is located in semi-arid climate, so there's not going to be a lot of vegetation there.

The Hollywood Hills show that doesn’t have to be the case.

The Hollywood Hills are pretty barren no? There are trees but still very arid and not lush forest.

Griffith Park is full of trees.

What the modern world thinks of as Los Angeles has always been terrible, treeless land. You have to go inland, and up the mountains, to get to the good land.

From the ~1830s:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4277

> Leaving Santa Barbara, we coasted along down, the country appearing level or moderately uneven, and, for the most part, sandy and treeless; until, doubling a high sandy point, we let go our anchor at a distance of three or three and a half miles from shore. It was like a vessel bound to St. John's, Newfoundland, coming to anchor on the Grand Banks; for the shore, being low, appeared to be at a greater distance than it actually was, and we thought we might as well have stayed at Santa Barbara, and sent our boat down for the hides. The land was of a clayey quality, and, as far as the eye could reach, entirely bare of trees and even shrubs; and there was no sign of a town,— not even a house to be seen. What brought us into such a place, we could not conceive.

> Leaving the boat, and picking our way barefooted over these, we came to what is called the landing-place, at high-water mark. The soil was, at it appeared at first, loose and clayey, and, except the stalks of the mustard plant, there was no vegetation. Just in front of the landing, and immediately over it, was a small hill, which, from its being not more than thirty or forty feet high, we had not perceived from our anchorage.

> I also learned, to my surprise, that the desolate-looking place we were in furnished more hides than any port on the coast. It was the only port for a distance of eighty miles, and about thirty miles in the interior was a fine plane country, filled with herds of cattle, in the centre of which was the Pueblo de los Angeles,— the largest town in California,— and several of the wealthiest missions; to all of which San Pedro was the seaport.

There are trees in Griffith Park but it is still a fairly arid terrain compared to other regions. You just have to look at some of the surrounding untouched areas around Hollywood Hills to see how its mostly shrubs with very few trees and grasses.

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 many many years to grow a proper tree.

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.

Yes, I live in a new apartment in Munich and when I look out of the window, I feel like I'm in nature. Really nice.

> 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 is also plausible, especially here in Australia, that trees lead to nicer climates that are more appealing to folks who can afford 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 the world for tree cover given the climate

I could never afford to live in Sydney, but my late father’s upbringing in the then “poor” North Sydney is starkly different to the quality of life available to the youth in “poor” areas of 21st century Sydney

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)

I'd guess both. Rich places have the money and influence to improve their area, leading to increased property value, in a cycle.

This is such a long-standing difference that Sydney newspapers will use the word 'leafy' to describe a suburb as having significant social capital. The local governments in the 'leafy' areas are extremely protective of their trees, for example, have a look at Hornsby Shire Council's regulations on trees[0]. They will fine you significant amounts of money if you kill or significantly prune a tree on your own property without permission.

[0] https://www.hornsby.nsw.gov.au/environment/flora-and-fauna/t...

Mostly urban density ideas were incompatible with green space in the decades prior. The more you want to fit people to "lower" rent, the less you can allocate for grass or trees.

I don't know. When thinking about "urban density in decades prior" the first thing that comes to my mind are the "commie blocks" of the 50s-80s. The thinking of those often explicitly included green space: put people in denser higher buildings and you have space for green spaces in between. The execution wasn't always stellar, but it was in no way incompatible with trees.

There were a lot of open spaces in the 60s and 70s, but over the years, "every" space has been converted into utility or new buildings.

I think you misunderstand the commie block. The entire greenspace is part of the property as well. See peter cooper village in nyc.

Things like Cooper village seems to be the exception where I live.

Those projects are common all over the eastern US at least. Western US made them more squat generally a couple stories, but about as much green space surrounding the property. Not often as many trees but the children play outside and leave bikes and toys across the property.

During summers, old commieblocks in my neighborhood look like ships in a sea of trees. High density and lots of greenery can coexist.

Would you mind sharing your location (even vaguely) ? or maybe another place with similar architecture if you prefer.

Feel free to check out the whole neighborhood and courtyards between the buildings: https://www.google.com/maps/@56.0184683,92.8469346,3a,75y,17...

Agreed, although I still don't get the fact we continually plant trees that grow taller than the overhead power lines and then the council has to continually prune them into weird shapes to prevent interference.

e.g. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-18/pruning-street-trees-...

A lesson on how not to do things. I'm all for appropriate trees though.

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 :)

Its super expensive to put in trees and maintain them. Most slumlords cut the trees down and do things like pave the entire plot. Rich people don’t move for trees. They create rich neighborhoods where there aren’t any trees all the time, then they bring in trees from nurseries and hire landscapers.

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.

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.

Privatisation gone wrong!

Something the UK has a lot of experience with

Doesn't that count as plain old fraud?

And steal of wood.

One cubic meter of Cedrus is like 1000 euro in the market. Most owners don't realize that trees had value, and are often tricked to get rid of their "diseased" old cedars with a convenient "free removal" by part of the company that will chop it. If the owner can't be persuaded, a common trick deployed is some "allergic" woman calling authorities and requiring to chop that tree because it makes her uncomfortable. Then some good Samaritans ring the bell offering their services. Extra bonus if you can made the owner to pay for the operation.

The photo in the article looks amazing! You basically don't see a city, you see a vast woodland! An occasional rooftop peeking through here and there are the only signs of civilization.

I'd love to live in a place like that. London is a very green city by many standards, but it is nowhere close to appearing like the unbroken forest in the article. In fact, the thing I miss the most after having moved to the UK are the forests. Most of it is private and fenced off, and it's just tiny patches of woods anyway. It's interesting how different it is compared to Switzerland for example, where one can roam freely (at risk of being chased by an occasional herd of curious cows) and there are plenty of forests where one can escape civilization.

Huh? I've read multiple times that in the UK, private land can't be "fenced off" and the general public has the right to roam on it, as long as they aren't causing a nuisance or getting too close to peoples' homes. Is that only for pastures or something?

> and the general public has the right to roam on it

There's no right to freely roam in the UK unlike Finland and other countries [1], although there are public footpaths/rights of way that cross private land [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

[2] https://www.gov.uk/right-of-way-open-access-land/use-public-...

That applies outside of Scotland as far as I'm aware, whereas in Scotland there is a right to roam on all land as long as you're not disturbing housing/farm activities etc.

Good point

Generally, only undeveloped land is covered by freedom to roam. Forests, cultivated land and gardens aren't necessarily freely accessible by law, if they are privately owned they can be fenced.

There is much more expansive freedom to roam in Scotland, but then most of the land there is undeveloped anyway.

Only in Scotland.

sheep dictatorship basically

Only on established trails afaik. You can't just wander all over someone's property.

I also happen to live in such area. It's nice, but there are also downsides – solar roofs for example don't make sense here.

That's fair criticism, but perhaps it'd be much more effective to have a few but large solar farms outside the city, no?

Or a nuclear plant.

I think the department in charge of maintaining roads should also be put in charge of maintaining trees. Any time a road needs to be widened, make provisions for planting (or better) transplanting trees, including watering infrastructure.

> However, planting trees in cities is pretty much all upside with almost no downside (except that birds tend to shit on my car).

> So the next time you're enjoying a walk down a lovely shady street, take a look up and appreciate the trees.

Author seems to be contradicting themselves (:

I’ll trade a rare chance of bird poop to live in a pleasant leafy area :)

A bird actually once pooped directly on my shirt, and it’s one of the funniest things I can remember.

I understand that tall trees a threat to capital and maybe also to human life when one falls over near a house, but do we really need to chop them down?

Can we not add metal struts between a house and a tall tree, to reinforce its strength, rather than preemptively cut it every time?

Unfortunately the decision is often made based on costs, and chopping them down is cheaper than employing an arborist (?) to make sure the tree is reinforced properly.

Please don't get me wrong, I agree with you. In many historic cities, there are trees that are hundreds of years old. There are trees that have been around since before the invention of the telegraph, lived through 2 world wars and are still going strong! There are efforts to keep these alive, but I feel newly planted trees won't get the chance to live that long :(

"There are trees that have been around since before the invention of the telegraph"

There are trees, that are allmost 5000 years old, so around the time humans started building cities.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_trees

The oldest tree in a city might be this one, 2300 years old, living history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaya_Sri_Maha_Bodhi

Around here, they also plan to chop down a lot of trees that are around 200 years old, because the road repairs are cheaper with them gone. I hope it does not get to it as resistance is forming, but I might consider climbing and sitting there to block it.

Simpler/better to plant a new tree.

Plant a new tree and then pay air conditioner for 20 years until the tree grows again. Simpler yes; better not so much, if you take in mind all the hidden costs.

Of course sometimes the tree is rotten or will fall over your home, and it must go before that happens.

Too much KSP?

The tree just needs to be managed, the whole thing doesn't need to be cut down.

I'm in London on a tree lined street, every year they come and cut branches. If trees are rotten then they are cut (we have a lot of non-native trees).

In this bit of London there's a target to plant much more trees, so any cut down are replaced with a native tree.

Property developers are a different matter, I'm pretty sure the huge tree behind the flat I used to live in was illegally cut down; if the council had been aware it would probably have had a tree protection order put on it.

It is a $10k fine to cut down any tree over 6" in diameter without a permit in our city.

We have many cherry trees that form a pink-petal snow every year, that were planted after hostilities ceased with Japan in WWII:

Accolade, Afterglow, Akebono, Ama-no-gawa, Atsumori, Autumnalis Rosea, Avium Plena, Beni-shidare, Birch Bark Cherry, Choshu-hizakura, Fudan-zakura, Gyoiko, Hosokawa-nioi, Ichihara-tora-no-o, Ichiyo, Ito-kukuri, Ito-zakura, Jo-nioi, Jugatsu-zakura, Kanzan, Kiku-shidare-zakura, Kiku-zakura, Korean Hill Cherry, Mikuruma-gaeshi, O-yama-zakura, Ojochin, Okame, Oshima-zakura, Pandora, Pink Perfection, Rancho, Sargent Hybrid Cherry, Schmitt Cherry, Sendai-shidare, Shiro-fugen, Shirotae, Shogetsu, Shosar, Shujaku, Snofozam, Snow Goose, Somei-yoshino, Spire, Star Cherry, Tai-haku, Takasago, Taki-nioi, Ukon, Umineko, Washi-no-o, Whitcomb, Yae-beni-shidare, Yama-zakura, Yokihi

Fruit trees consume a lot of water, thus many cities should consider drought resistant options to reduce sun baked roads.

Some don't like the trees due to superstitions, but most enjoy the reminder Spring has arrived. =3

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

I read somewhere that trees help seed clouds, thus causing rain (or maybe just moisture in the air? I forget), though it seems like it's also a vicious cycle - the areas not in drought continue to not be in drought, whereas areas that are lose trees that could've seeded clouds, and thus rain. That said, I agree with the points made in the article. "Trees are good" is a pretty uncontroversial stance. Should be, anyway. I do wonder, if the biophilia thing is real, and it seems reasonable that it is - are some trees better at creating this effect than others, even if the same size? If so, does it vary by region, cultural/ethnic background, etc., and what do those trees that are unusually biophilia-inducing have in common? I have no idea what the answers to those questions are, and there's a lot of speculation before you need to ask it, but it seems like some university or government or something should be researching those questions right now, what with all the plans to make cities greener.

I recently visited Tbilisi in Georgia which is also almost a city within a forest. It is very nice and something I would wish upon any city.

However, it does take it toll on buildings and infrastructure.

I wonder what Johannesburg spends per tree in not just cutting and leaf collection but also in addition road and pavement repairs and I’m sure there is more than one foundation that has been damaged by roots.

When I lived in Delhi, my home was near the ridge area of North Campus. Its a lush forest with shrubs, ferns, and subtropical hard trees with a few lakes. The temperature difference, the coolness in air and the vibe difference from the rest of the city was like night and day.

I also know this feeling! I think if more people knew did, they would be more supportive of urban green spaces. It's always remarkable to ride my bike through a paved residential area and then cut through this green alleyway-- the temperature and air is so fresh and feels 5 degrees cooler than the street.

Cities have too much thermal mass exposed to the Sun, that's is. As a result they makes heat domes between buildings and you can't reduce much the thermal mass with trees because you still have all the buildings.

A solution is new buildings "coated" with light air-gapped panels where air between them and the core structure of the building is free to slowly climb and going outside in the atmosphere. Of course you can't do so on glass facade walls. And it's hard to do on most existing buildings. Also you can't do much for the large asphalted area.

Like it or not, cities and global heating are incompatible, as cities and many other aspects of the modernity.

When I tell people I live in Berlin, they often make a face and disparage it for being an "ugly" city - and to a certain extent I agree with them... if they've only visited the tourist heavy central areas (Alexanderplatz, Friedrichstrasse, and much of Mitte), where there is a notable lack of greenery.

What I try to remind them of, is that there are more parks, gardens, and forest here than any other capital city, and that those areas will go toe-to-toe beauty wise with anywhere.

Additionally, as temperatures rise (and there's a lack of indoor refuges due to AC being uncommon), finding respite among the greenery is one of the only foolproof ways to cut the heat here.

Would love to see them tear up highways and build forests and not the other way around

It's not quite what you mean, but a woman in Ireland has planted over 1000 trees on her 3-acre plot, which was previously overrun with rushes and thought to be barren.

Here are her before and after pictures, maybe it will inspire you too. https://bealtainecottage.com/before-permaculture/

I live in big historocal city in Czechia. Trees are rare here. Those few trees have trimmed crowns regularly, every spring they left only trunk with some shot cuted branches. It looks terrible and makes trees weaker.

Arguments are that trees are dangerous and could fall on property or peopel walking under and that it not fits in historical concept of city.

It is impossible to stay on main square during summer and overall aesthetic of treeless streets is sad. It's actually biggest downside of my city.

Every time I visit Germany or Austria, I envy those green cities.

Dense urban-type settlements attracted billions (and continue to do so worldwide) as they offer hard-to-beat advantages. But as these gains are booked and largely taken for granted, people long for the paradise lost, the walkability, the green spaces etc.

Anecdotaly the pandemic may have hastened this realisation, as people resorted to walking in larger numbers. Walking around tree-lined streets with lots of natural looking grass and flower beds certainly beats doing the same in a car infested concrete jungle.

I also grew up in Johannesburg, and really miss those trees. When you drive a little bit out of the city you see a completely different landscape.

However I'm sceptical about the author's claim that there's no downside. I would assume that most of the trees are not native, and in any case definitely don't grow natively at that density. Feels like there's no free lunch in ecology: is mass tree-planting an exception?

Author here :)

You're correct that very few of them are native. That being said, when comparing to a city with no trees vs a city with non-native trees, I think the latter is still superior.

Canberra is heavenly in terms of number of trees. Acres of parkland, farmland or wild bush near every part of the city. As well as treelined streets.

We have the same issue in my city with respect to areas lacking trees.

The trees in the more affluent areas tend to be better maintained by property owners, and replacement trees are planted when trees are lost in ice and wind storms.

The city's forestry department is working on a long-term solution to this problem but it takes time to grow trees.

Living in Brooklyn, I always prefer to explore east/west instead of north/south. This is because the streets have trees, while the avenues are exposed. In the hot summer months you’ll have a delightful walk down Bergen, then absolutely bake on Franklin or Nostrand.

I just wish they wouldn’t plant acorn trees anywhere near a road, squirrels just end up in a kill zone

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.

Not in Europe though.

Mostly better, still awful.

Depends, people keep saying stuff about “Europe” as if it’s some single monolithic place.

In any case very few people live in old town houses built prior to the late 19th century (in those places have their own issues) and there was plenty of car centric development during the 1950s and subsequent decades.

> 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

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.

Even for the US, I think the worst part is that they're not an obstacle to traffic, but they're an extra expense plus they block those huge ads from roadside businesses.

Americans are making many of their roads and towns/cities hell just to penny pinch.

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?

Simply remove cars, 40% more space

EAB is definitely making sure we cut down more than ever!

Please tell this to mediaval towns in Italy.

my city is the largest urban forest.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/07/london...

Johannesburg is the largest man-made urban forest and Tijuca forest in Rio is the largest urban forest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_forest

Okay, by some people's argument it is and since this is not an exact science comparing Tijuca's 3,953 hectares to London's 14,000 even with percentage coverage it would suggest otherwise.

That said lots of cities have a claim: Oslo, Joberg(as you indicate), some places in China.

Is it most trees, densest coverage, or simply largest area that still satisfies the definition of Urban Forest? You can pick a different answer for whichever metric qualifies.

Trees in cities, just taking up valuable space, handing out shade and oxygen equally and for free, like them there communisms. Their leaves might turn red in autumn, but they are red inside all year, these woody marxist menaces!

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