Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Chicago has a much bigger downtown than SF, and it's mostly a concrete jungle. It also has a lot more space dedicated to industrial and former industrial space, train tracks, train yards, and roads. Many of the residential neighborhoods have surprisingly few trees.
National Geographic is a pretty reliable source. Urban Tree Canopy - National Geographic
NYC: 21%
Philadelphia: 20%
Austin: 37%
Detroit: 23%
DC: 36%
Baltimore: 27%
Portland: 30%
Tampa: 32%
Pittsburgh: 42%
That is the order they listed the cities, for some reason. In order of percentage it's Philadelphia, NYC, Detroit, Baltimore, Portland, Tampa, DC, Austin, Pittsburgh. Data appears to be from 2007-2011.
And since 1995, when the first reliable census was conducted, New York’s street-tree population has verifiably exploded — it is up by 30 percent since then, from about 500,000 to about 650,000. The Bronx has 67 percent more street trees than it did 20 years ago, Brooklyn has 42 percent more, and even Staten Island, where development has raged, has 46 percent more street trees.
Chicago has a much bigger downtown than SF, and it's mostly a concrete jungle. It also has a lot more space dedicated to industrial and former industrial space, train tracks, train yards, and roads. Many of the residential neighborhoods have surprisingly few trees.
Downtowns don't take that much area, even for Chicago. I haven't been through too many Chicago neighborhoods. But compared to other cities of similar density (Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco) its streets seem to have lots of trees.
That's funny, I always thought North American cities more inclined to cut down trees than plant them
(to make more way for more Walmart parking lots, strip malls and subdivisions).
But a sea of trees? Sounds like hyperbole to me. Never been to any city anywhere in the world
that could be described as a 'sea of trees.' (An actual sea of trees would be called a forest not a city).
Can you give an example of one?
It appears that Cities in Northern Europe have more trees than pretty much anywhere else. (But most of the urban forest is in parks, vs. in American cities it is in yards, buffers between homes and buildings and open space due to development regulations.)
I wonder if the historical connection of America to England and Northern Europe started the tradition of homes with yards and trees in the USA?
Last edited by Office Politics; 12-02-2014 at 06:38 AM..
Yea, something seems off about those numbers. San Francisco is more treed than Chicago*?! Do the numbers use city limits or something else? The European numbers are probably counting parkland and some outlying neighborhoods. I can't get google maps to draw Stockholm city limits, but it's obvious that
if the limits are large enough, you'll gets lots of forest for Stockholm. The NYC is 20% parkland, assuming most of that is tree-covered, not much of the rest of the city has tree cover.
Yup. I didn't make it for Stockholm, but for Helsinki which was second on the list and familiar to me. The forestry areas are due mainly because of these areas. City limits in red.
1 = Recreation area
2 = Central Park
3 = Swampland, University research ground
4 = Military area and training ground
5 = recreation area
6 = Archipelago
7 = Recently annexed area, mostly yet unbuilt, also partly national park
8 = Traditional villa and museum area, the President's residence, governmental buildings
There's an interesting map in this link. It shows the correlation of trees to neighborhood income. It seems the middle and upper income 'hoods have more trees.
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 12-02-2014 at 08:27 AM..
Yup. I didn't make it for Stockholm, but for Helsinki which was second on the list and familiar to me. The forestry areas are due mainly because of these areas. City limits in red.
Appears outside the peninsula containing the center city, the built up areas have a fair amount of green mixed in. The city limits appear to contain farmland right on the edge (to the east of 1).
Any reason they don't mix place streets in the center city? For example, on streets like this? The center city streets are definitely wide enough for trees, unlike some medieval era European cities, especially Mediterranean ones. Is the reason just out of habit, because that's what people are used to? As I said, most New York City streets, at least in the older parts, were originally tree-less but they were added. A few streets like this tree addition was skipped over because the locals thought it'd ruin the look of the street. Maybe it was a similar idea. More typical street of that are with trees:
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
