I had a moment a few years ago (while on vacation) after a long flight. We set a blanket out under a huge tree and napped in the park all afternoon. I was staring up at a massive tree for probably 3 or 4 hours straight, basically doing nothing else.
It is remarkable how calming it is to just sit there and stare at a tree.
Now everywhere I live has to have a big tree somewhere nearby. There’s one right outside and I spend at least several minutes, sometimes much longer, just staring at it.
Had a class reunion recently and we got a tour through our old school building. Of course everything had changed beyond recognition during the past 30 years, except for one thing:
The old tree right outside the window was still the same. I know because I must have stared into it for hundreds of hours while being bored to no end during class. It probably prevented me from going insane. Thank you old tree.
I've started something similar in my life. Chris Boltendhal (Founder of Grave Digger) has been criticizing how streaming services had turned music into a wallpaper, and others have too. Something that's just there in the background, but not fully appreciated.
So now I've been making room in my week for new albums of bands I enjoy and listen to. Just an hour or two of nothing, but listening to this album, while sitting in a hammock or somewhere else entirely relaxed.
I can only recommend this. For example, Heilung(1) or Wardruna(2) are already great on theri own, but one of their new songs, but I was listening to one of their songs in a park over here, sitting at a tree and suddenly a little noise was nearby. Turns out, there was a squirrel looking at me and then scampering by. Later on a little bird also was exasperated I looked at him as he chased a bug. Very fitting to these bands.
Sometimes balancing the speed of our lives indeed seems like a very good idea.
I’ve done this both on and off psychedelics, and both are lovely experiences.
I also dated someone who wasn’t a particularly “crunchy” hippy type, but she did like to randomly hug trees on our walks to show appreciation. I do it now too, there’s something oddly calming and connecting about it - it may look weird, but that’s par for the course for me as it is
Nature, physical touch (even with non-human objects), and being near or touching a big stationary natural object triggers our parasympathetic nervous system too, helps reduce stress.
Everyone should go hug a tree! It's not completely woo woo, there are real biological benefits.
The staring you discovered is actually an old meditation technic. Trees are nice for it, but so can be many other things. A burning candle, the setting sun, a cloud, a river a rock. Important is doing it with intense focus and not get distracted.
A few years ago, I spent a summer renting a 1 bedroom new build apartment in the south part of Seattle. The only outside light or fresh air came from a sliding door that overlooked an interior parking garage. It always smelled like fumes. Couldn't even see the sky from most angles. I was convinced after that that living conditions without access to fresh air and nature are probably one of the more potent causes of neuroticism in city-dwellers. Lack of AC didn't help either when it was hitting the 90s at multiple points that summer.
This is probably the one area that most cities in North Carolina excel at. We don't have great sidewalks or transit, but we have a ton a trees. Less than we used to though. But from my current apartment, I'm closer to seeing 300 trees than 3. The post-hurricane-Hugo effort to buy out houses in flood prone zones and turn them into greenways was probably the single smartest thing Charlotte and the surrounding towns have done (though I'm glad we got our light rail too - too bad for Raleigh). It's a good pattern - protects the natural watershed, gives wildlife a safe place to live, makes flooding less impactful, and creates pleasant away-from-road paths for walking and biking.
> The post-hurricane-Hugo effort to buy out houses in flood prone zones …
Toronto completed a similar initiative after Hurricane Hazel in 1954. A number of neighbourhoods in valleys were not rebuilt after devastating flooding, and the city was left with wonderful green space, especially in the Don Valley. For me, it’s a “top 10” biking experience, to cross Toronto by bicycle along the trail system.
As an aside, it took a minute for me to parse the OP as I initially took it to mean some sort of infrastructure resiliency project (buying outhouses vs buying out houses).
Greenville, South Carolina is also totally covered in trees. I think they have a bunch of laws that new developments have to plant trees, cutting a tree down requires planting multiple others nearby. The whole city is just covered in trees. Even in the suburbs nearby. It’s awesome.
MD has some replace-felled-trees law, but it’s kinda crappy cause trees can be planted somewhere else entirely. So a big development can be treeless.
It’s maybe a good rule of thumb, but as I’m just outside of Helsinki for a while now, I’ve just realized what’s the difference between here and everywhere in central and south Europe: the trees are large and old. Even if there are trees in Vienna, Budapest, Brussels etc they are small, and very young compared to here. Even in the greener small Belgian villages, they are not that green than here, just outside of Helsinki’s city center.
And here, somehow, that stupid excuse that they destroy utility cables and pipes didn’t cause to cut them out. It seems that it’s possible to solve this.
And of course, I’m basically in a forest. There are trees everywhere. The “park” here is an at least 100 years old forest. There is one about 30 meters from here, and about 500 meters an even larger one, where I’ve just lost today.
Of course, the city center is different, but even comparing the outskirts of other cities, this is very-very green.
Depends on what part of Budapest. One of the reasons people like Zugló (14th district) is the many trees. And farther out it's even better, of course.
But a lot of the trees in Hungary just don't grow that big, maybe the most marked difference when I first saw it after growing up in Indiana. When we lived in the 16th district of Budapest, there was one neighborhood I used to walk the dog in that had these massive old American sycamores. Those things were beautiful.
One thing that I really really like about living in Amsterdam, is that we have trees and plants everwhere.
Also, for 2 years now, city stopped cutting most of the plant growth in parks and on the side of roads. Its so beautiful green and colourful now and insects are having a great time.
I counted this year already 6 different sorts of humblebees in my garden.
It's a competition about which municipality can remove most pavement tiles & replace with greenery.
People do this on their own too - guerilla gardening style. It's not uncommon to ride through a city street, and see a strip of pavement tiles removed & some flowers in there. Or some plants dangling from a pot attached to a street light. As long as postal workers & elderly people with strollers can still pass, most municipalities support this.
We did this in front of out old house in Scheveningen. The hofje had a very small shared space behind us so we pulled up the first foot of bricks in the street side of the house and planted flowers.
Still, apparently Amsterdam somehow doesn't satisfy the 30% criterion at all. Can anyone find detailed numbers? I live there and my street is lined with large trees.
Was thinking the same. There must be some glitch in how this is calculated, as we definitely have >30% tree coverage in every city. Maybe the vast areas of shrub-filled countryside and farmland are skewing the data.
One of the reasons I moved from London to the town I'm in now was how much effort our local council puts in to maintaining the town's greenery. There's dedicated wildflower areas all over the place to encourage insects, which in turn encourages the bird life.
I think these simplifications end up hurting more than helping.
30% tree cover looks very different depending on the trees your municipality chooses.
For example, Barcelona covers everything with a variety of Platanus, which is easier to keep than other trees, but it’s quite dirty and produces A LOT of pollen. For me, that I’m allergic to it, it just makes the city unavailable for 2-4 weeks every year.
Having smaller plants, with more variety also feels much better than just sprinkling the right amount of massive trees with equal spacing. I’m pretty convinced part of the “we need more green” feeling people get is actually “I need something in my environment to not look like a grid”.
I also think these are harmful simplifications, for several reasons.
First of all, I'm skeptical about the study that proves that people seeing three trees have better mental health. There are so many factors that it's hard to separate one. A solid study would compare families living in the same building, roughly at the same floor, and with similar parameters (family size, income, education, street noise, etc.). Comparisons from different buildings induce too many side factors. I think that collecting this sample would be very hard. I can't access the full-text behind the paywall, so I don't know their methodology, and their abstract is vague, so I fear the paper is meaningless.
Then do people really watch that much through their windows? I'd be surprised that having a glimpse of a few trees at home once a day could change anyone's life.
Even if trees did has a positive impact on mental health, I suppose inciting people to bike or walk (at least partly) to workplaces and stores would dwarf that impact, for mental and physical health.
Lastly, the 30% of tree cover seems arbitrary. For the same percentage, would covering every street with trees have the same impact as keeping trees inside parks? I think the goal to provide places where people go for a walk requires different solutions than the goal to reduce the heat in a concrete jungle.
> Having smaller plants, with more variety also feels much better than just sprinkling the right amount of massive trees with equal spacing.
The thing people want from trees is shading and general cooling of the environment. Small plants provide much less of that and the summers are increasingly hot.
I was walking in central London and something felt wrong. I couldn't quite tell what though, but I had this constant feeling of unease.
It took me a few days to understand - there are no trees in central London (the City).
Sure, you have a small/big park here and there, but no random trees on side walks. It's literally a (beautiful) concrete/glass wasteland.
Note: I only walked a few of the main streets, I'm sure I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's quite noticeable compared with other cities after you realize it. And there are random trees in other areas, outside City of London.
I'm not sure what parts of London you were in, but there's many trees in London on sidewalks. There's even a specific species for it - the London plane (Platanus × hispanica)
If you're in the very new, constantly rebuilt, concrete jungle that is the very small part of the city, then OK, greenery is going to be hard to spot. Particularly as they tend to nearly always choose the wrong species to plant and aftercare is an afterthought. But your assessment is factually incorrect.
See for yourself. Go to Google maps, drop a good few street view randomly around the city and you'll see that more often than not you'll see trees.
Also, I have a networks in arboriculture who work in the city and they're never short on work.
I'm not doubting your experience of unease or a concrete/glass wasteland (that's yours and not mine to question) but the facts don't support the statement of no random trees on pavements (side walks).
I'd echo the gp's thoughts. There are parts of the City and the West End that are basically devoid of trees.
My biggest bugbear in London is the number of developments that have a "token tree" with one lonely tree in one corner, often doing quite poorly, presumably included to check some item on a planning consent checklist.
Of course, London has many green spaces and on the whole has plenty of trees, it's just they're quite unevenly distributed.
Maybe I'm just in different places. Normally I'm walking from Kings Cross down Grey street and around Covent Garden type areas.
I'm nearly always on foot. Perhaps it's just because I'm also an arborist and I'm hard wired to see trees and avoid places that don't have them?
The token tree thing is a problem. Daisy Barrington was part of webinar on the topic as part of the Arboricultural Associations webinar series [0]. Rarely do the species planted get based on local ecology and or have a solid aftercare plan. They're normally chosen for immediate aesthetic look (Paper / Himalayan birch being the most common) rather than how they'd exist over time.
In short birch being a pioneer species is short lived (80 years), grows fast towards light and dislikes being pruned. Where as oaks, norway maple, London planes ( some of which are "climax species") etc live for longer, grow slower and respond to pruning better, support local ecology better and some don't mind the pollution of an urban environment so much.
> Of course, London has many green spaces and on the whole has plenty of trees, it's just they're quite unevenly distributed.
I would say they are pretty well distributed through places where people actually tend to live. I live in a pretty average residential area in zone 3 and not only are there nice parks nearby but there are plenty of trees. London is of course massive so I can't say it's the same everywhere but most residential areas I've visited have been quite green. The City and West End (very much commercial/touristy areas) are the exception in my experience.
The City of London, aka "The City", aka "The Square Mile" is not the same thing as Greater London or even what's usually called "Central London." I don't think "Central London" has an agreed exact definition, but it's likely what you thought the parent post meant.
The City is a specific area, more or less covering the same area as the original Roman city. It's the original financial district - though a lot of that moved to Docklands at the tail end of the 1900s.
It's much more built up than even adjacent Westminster ("The City of Westminster") and definitely has far fewer trees.
I don't think the point is that London literally lacks pavement trees. As you say, the London plane is almost part of the city's visual identity in many areas. The interesting thing to me is how uneven the experience can be
open Google maps at Monument station, find a tree in the area. all the streets in that region of London (let's say 1 sq km) are quite narrow, I would guess there just is not enough space for street trees.
When I drop a pin to Monument station I see a sign, so I spin the view around. In canon street I see two trees (no leaves - winter). They're hard to see as they're behind a black cab.
Clicking once into Canon street towards those trees presents me with the trees. They're now in leaf and look like Sorbus intermedia "swedish whitebeam" and the key id is the margin on the leaf and the green fruits. Photo was taken July/August as prior to that they're in the flowering phase (beautiful to see btw).
When I spin the view down Canon street I see three mature trees in full leaf on pavements / sidewalks.
As I said in another reply, I'm an arborist and I'm hardwired to see trees and perhaps I subconsciously avoid areas that have none, so maybe that's bias on my part.
The article links to the Tree Equity Project (https://uk.treeequityscore.org/map) which has pretty detailed measures for London. Some very central areas do go as low as 2-3%, but they are probably the exception rather than the rule.
Different countries / geographies have these very different relationship with nature. I remember coming back from small islands in the caribeans, and there nature is overwhelming, the size and density. Just after landing home (france) I felt suddenly naked from the lack of vegetation, there were trees but one every 400m on large avenues. It felt empty.
Agreed when it comes to the City of London (for anyone not familiar, this means the financial centre). It can feel pretty grim walking there at times.
Elsewhere though, possible to plan continuous walks through greenish spaces. One starting at Victoria: Belgravia back streets, Hyde Park, Grosvenor Square, Marylebone High Street, Regents Park, Primrose Hill, Belsize Park, Hampstead Heath.
On the other hand, when I visit Venice - which is as tight a city as can be, small streets with stone in every direction except the sky - they somehow manage to drop trees in stone squares.
I live in a rain forest, so this post confused me for a minute. I was expecting some kind of on-screen optical illusion, but it turned to be asking about actual physical trees outside my window.
Yeah, I can see trees. I can see about fifty trees without standing up from my desk. I cut down more than three trees a month, probably. The weirdest ones are yagrumo - in about five years they can be fifty feet tall and the wood is so soft you can cut them down with a butter knife, just about. Before moving here, I'd never really considered that the Venn circles of "tree" and "weed" can overlap.
What do you think of life there in general? Do you think it's a reasonable idea, or one of those things that sound great on paper but then turns out only very specific types of people will actually enjoy it.
Hah, looking out my window, I can see about 300 trees, and it’d be more if it weren’t for all the trees in the way. The house is next to a park that’s designed for walking in, with lots of twisty pathways between trees and bushes to give you the feeling that you’re not in a manufactured space.
I just reflected a bit on the fact that there’s essentially nothing but foliage and slivers of sky visible from the windows of the apartment I currently live in, unless you’re right next to a window getting a particularly wide view. Perks of living right at the edge of a neighborhood originally built literally in the middle of forest.
Tree cover is great but I wish cities would just consider shade a bit more. As the world heats up, it's insane that so many places humans need to be for extended amounts of time have enough shade for a handful of people at best and often nothing. I'm thinking long sidewalks, waiting areas, playgrounds.
Long sidewalks could also be covered with solar roofs for shade, but trees have the advantage that they don't block sunlight in winter without leaves, when sun is nice (in colder climates).
Some photos would be really awesome. What does a view in an area that passes the test look like compared to one that doesn't? 3 trees doesn't sound like a lot, I don't have a good mental concept of this.
Yes. I live in a "forest community" in the outskirts of Portland, OR. But I got a chuckle thinking what do you define as a "tree"? I have three Douglas firs that are big enough that if you cut them down you could build a small house out of the lumber from each one or a medium sized one from all three. I have a similar number of big leaf maples that are not as tall but have huge canopies. Then a whole bunch that are more "urban" sized trees, magnolias, dog woods, Japanese maples. Tons of tree "plants" that are working their way up but I would not consider trees yet. Then the shrubs that are pretending to be trees, camellias, rhododendrons, et. All on a half acre. Then there are the thousands on the hill side across a small valley...
Esbo / Espoo is an odd one out, of those four. The three others look like the olden European cities you'd expect, but you'll have a hard time getting around in Espoo without a car. There are plenty of beautiful neighborhoods in Espoo, but it's basically a large spread of separate suburbs rather than a city in the way the rest are. The actual "Espoo Center" is not very green and flowery either, and it's not really thought of as an actual city center.
Helsinki has a lot of parks, and also housing companies tend to have trees in their gardens, along with trees alongside many of the bigger roads. But even so it's a reasonably dense city.
Espoo is much more spread out, and the areas between them are all full of trees and greenery. So I very much agree with you, I've visited Espoo a few times but without a car I wouldn't want to live there.
On the other hand it does have a massive central park in the middle which has all kinds of animals, including deer.
I agree that the public transport is not particularly great if you don’t live on the metro or train line. It’s usually faster to drive and even with one person cheaper even when paying for gasoline and parking. Public transport is ridiculously overpriced in Finland.
Even Helsinki leaves much to be desired on that front, the coverage is okay but the ticket prices are ridiculous. It’s not feasible to drive in the center though, takes forever to get anywhere.
Singapore here, checking all the boxes. 200m from a neighborhood park with many trees, and ~700m from a GARGANTUAN park, Jurong Lake Gardens, over 4 km in length with many times that in pathways through gardens and around a lake.
London here: can see 12 trees within 30m from the back, 10 from the front; 50m from a neighbourhood park, 300m from Burgess Park (140 acres), probably 700m from Southwark Park (60 acres) (all of these are well tree-d)
Yes, Singapore is great for that. But to be fair with the other cities, it’s very hard _not_ to have abundant vegetation in tropical rainforest climate. Everything grows rapidly and stops at nothing in its way.
In other climates, like European ones, this becomes much more complex. Germany struggles even to keep its forests alive with long stretches of missing rain, higher temperatures, and new pests. Single trees in cities constantly die. Spain is in large parts a desert etc.
I really hope we find a solution/adapted plants to keep cities from heating up so much.
> Yes, Singapore is great for that. But to be fair with the other cities, it’s very hard _not_ to have abundant vegetation in tropical rainforest climate. Everything grows rapidly and stops at nothing in its way.
Eh, have a look at other tropical cities like Johor Bahru or Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur and you can see that it's very much possible to have way less greenery than Singapore.
The recent trouble with the Borkenkäfer was just a consequence of monoculture. Germany doesn't struggle with keeping forests alive: it's normal at any one time for individual trees in forests to die. Decaying dead wood is important for the ecosystems.
Less than Singapore for sure. Less than European cities, I’m not so sure. I don’t have the numbers but if you do an image search of Jakarta (probably one of the worst vegetation-wise and boasting a population of a quarter of Germany) it still has trees in every picture and many more than let’s say Frankfurt or Madrid. The latter has many photos without a single tree.
> The recent trouble with the Borkenkäfer was just a consequence of monoculture.
Even worse. It was monoculture of trees that aren't even native to the climate zone. The trees were imported from Scandinavia for their superior lumber quality, and were on edge even without the added stress from droughts and heat waves.
It's much much more complex than that. Climate is only one factor and by far not the most important one. Prosperity and structure of the city plays a much more important role. Singapore is an outlier because it's a rich country on an island the size of a city.
Big cities in Europe are usually surrounded by more rural areas in most of Europe for historical reasons (surrounding farmlands used to feed the city), lessening the need for city parks and greenery since the countryside was surrounding the city. If the city IS the country and even isolated on an island, that's of course not an option.
Another factor is also rooted in history. Like most cities in Europe, Singapore is old, though most of its growth happened in the past 60 years with proper urban planning. Europe's cities on the other hand grew over centuries without any kind of modern urban planning and the pressure of rebuilding quickly after the many devastating wars didn't help either.
Finally there's the issue of money - being one of the richest countries/cities on Earth helps tremendously with building a nice, liveable urban environment compared to some cities struggling to keep basic infrastructure running.
> Every home, school and office should have a view of at least three trees, be in a neighbourhood with 30% tree cover, and be within 300 metres of a park.
The middle one seems a lot harder to me than the other two.
Me too. The native trees around here aren't very tall and don't do a lot of covering. I'd love 30% but my neighborhood just isn't rich enough to have each yard contributing to a forest to that degree.
Maybe if we buried the power lines and turned the utility easements into open space.
In our small town, the local compliance officer is colluding with a tree-cutting company that has a contract with the city. They lie and claim trees are "dead" and they're constantly cutting them down unnecessarily at the taxpayer's expense. Pretty soon we're going to look like one of those new suburbs that are just concrete and grass, but with old houses.
That first map seems to map quite closely to koppen climate zones across the continent. Its hard to say whether the climate is decisive here because climate is a big influencer of urban design. However, its interesting that in Australia its the two Mediterranean climate cities (Perth and Adelaide) which frequently get labelled as worse for tree cover compared to the sub tropical east coast cities.
Thanks for sharing! I had no idea about the “3-30-300 test,” even though I always pay attention to city trees.
I can, however, easily explain the division in Europe: In Italy (for example, in Palermo), the vigorous growth of many species very often leads to significant damage to infrastructure.
Here in Vienna, there’s a directory of trees[1] where you can see, among other things, the species and age.
I read Don Quixote and thought it might be fun to visit some parts of Spain mentioned in the books. Then after looking at some maps and seeing a stark lack of trees, I decided I wouldn't enjoy the trip.
It didn't help that the King used them all up in the war with England a couple hundred years after Cervantes. A lot of Europe is trying to reforest now and hopefully that process continues.
We don't have the spectacular red Maple or Ponderosa pine forests that America has, this is true, but if this helps, some places in the North and Center of Spain (and many more in the rest of Europe) still look pretty much like Lothlorien. You just need to know where to go. Check Muniellos (oak), Tejera de Tosande (ancient yews and beech) or Irati forest (beech) for example.
The inner center and hot south can be more dusty and discouraging, but you can still be surprised by a few, not well known, jewels like Cabañeros, Valsain's pine forest, Alto Tajo, or Grazalema and the last relict Mediterranean -humid- forests in Cadiz. Plenty also of lagoons, marshes and aquatic ecosystems to visit, like Doñana or Daimiel. The biosphere reserve Hayedo de Montejo is located in Don Quixote's land.
I like to use wildlife as a proxy for the quality of a location. If you can see things like rabbits and squirrels on a regular basis, you are probably doing reasonably ok. I have to put up fences and other barriers or the deer will eat everything in my yard.
I've seen suburban development that would easily satisfy the three tree test from any window on any property, but they still come off as desolate wastes. The age of the trees seems to be a non trivial factor.
Yeah wildlife & its variety is a good indicator for how much an area is disturbed by humans.
For this reason, I'd prefer to have compact cities with a good amount of high-rise buildings and city parks dotted in between. As opposed to large sprawling suburban zones.
That leaves more space for natural areas outside cities where people are few & far between.
@steerpike on HN coined the "time to sheep" metric, a measure of how long you have to travel before you're surrounded by sheep[0], which correlates reasonably well with quality of living.
Alas, doesn't work very well outside of britain, but it's a good metric :)
I wonder why they didn't mention Atlanta, which probably meets the criteria except perhaps some parts are a little more than 300m from a park. The canopy here is about 47%.
From one window? From all windows? And how far from the window they should be visible, and how far can you look? Can you stick your head out? Can we cheat by planting a few very tall trees that can be seen from very far away? :)
> People who can see at least three trees from their window have better mental health than those who can't. It seems like the easiest of the three goals to achieve
Here we go, correlation does not equal causation. Simple as that. Planting 3 trees will not give you a better mental health nor will planting 10 trees. But moving in to an environment where many trees grow in front of your window will probably change a lot more than just putting trees in your view.
Parks are not nature. Parks are a sanitized parody of the natural world. They are a simulation meant to make us humans feel better about ourselves. They are gated grass farms, not wild areas, useful only to a select few animals (nothing bigger than a raccoon). Creating a park inside a urban area diverts land from actual nature. So, rather than build parks inside cities, we should develop that land and make our cities smaller.
We don't have to go all 40k hive world. Rather, if parks are kept at the urban periphery and/or are connected to each other, then they can thrive as actual natural space. We have modern transport technology. We can bring the people to the park rather than construct a park near the people and thereby deprive Bambi and all his friends of yet another acre of true wilderness.
I'm in Australia and I have view on a mountain so I see too many trees to count. Proximity to a forest was top priority for me and my wife.
Having lived in Europe for many years before, this is something that's most striking about Australia. I live in a state with one of the highest population densities and yet it still feels very sparsely populated relatively speaking.
No data for NW Scotland, presumably because 140mph winds for four weeks of the year (in the local language we call that "January") is incompatible with large trees.
For sure, it was one of things that got me about Orkney.
Mind you, wars and sheep did have a pretty devastating effect on the Caledonian woodland cover of the highlands. The current population of the red deer aren't helping with natural regeneration. This is one of the reasons for the case for re-introducing predator species.
But that's a complex topic with no simple answers and easy divisions.
I do not understand the low demand. It can be cheaper than beef and tastes good and is lean. Maybe it needs some promotion? The same arguments that have promoted vegetarianism (healthier and green) are applicable.
British eating habits have become really narrow over the years. Its hard to find offal (healthier and greener than just eating muscle meat). Rabbit seems to have pretty much disappeared too.
It's so good for you and it's incredibly sustainable because those damn things breed like rabbits.
Re offal I actually just did a really nice mutton liver curry the other day, something you won't find in your average "brown spicy glop for white people" takeaway but which you can get in the south side of Glasgow. Absolutely brilliant stuff, even better the second day if you can leave it alone that long. Four quid for about half a kilo of lamb liver out of the reduced section in the supermarket!
Am I the only one that stared at the photo at the top for 3 minutes trying to see three trees in the photo because I thought it was a post about optical illusions? No, oh ok.
American zoning forbids taller ~6 story residential building and trades open green space parks for shorter, 1-2 story buildings. The lower density means people are further away from the few parks that do exist too.
> and trades open green space parks for shorter, 1-2 story buildings.
Misleading. American cities have lots of short buildings, but they also have more land to put stuff on, be it trees or buildings.
> The lower density means people are further away from the few parks that do exist too.
In some parts of the US, this is absolutely true. In others, it absolutely is not. Silicon Valley is easily the worst place I've ever lived in this regard. As a Midwesterner, I had never lived more than ~400m from a park, even in the suburbs. In Santa Clara, I'm more than 1.5km from the nearest public park.
Most Midwestern and Eastern cities do not match the "sprawl" archetype that most techies associate with America. Look up "Urbs in Horto."
> American zoning forbids taller ~6 story residential building
You're allowed to build up to 5 stories out of lumber. So a common archetype for American apartments is a first floor of retail space made of concrete, which serves as a base for 5 stick-built floors of apartments. That's where 6 floors comes from.
But the statement on its own is false. You're certainly allowed to build taller, permits permitting (heh), it's just that 5-over-1 is a local maxima for cost efficiency vs. likelihood of getting permits.
There are very few cities with laws on the books that prohibit building taller than 6 floors. The issue is that you have to get approval from the city to build things, and residents get angry when you try to build high-rises. So, permits get rejected.
This is an important distinction because the route to change is wildly different. We need community attitudes to change about dense housing developments, we don't need to change any law that's currently on the books.
Well, I live up high in a penthouse with an amazing river view and hundreds of maple trees that also change colors throughout the seasons. I wish I could share it but I am certain some of you might geolocate it.
The "3 trees out of a window" sounds like an idiotic criterion because it ignores the elevation factor. In the exact same building, it's very likely you will see a couple dozen trees from a 10th floor window, and only one from a ground floor window. But which situation actually puts you closer to the flora?
I agree that that's the best way to take these kind of "rules", but that's the opposite of how the blog author presents it:
> the 3-30-300 test — a standard that has become the go-to for solving a universal urban problem
> 3-30-300 is a catchy, straightforward test that sets a clear benchmark for measuring equal access to nature.
> I found that my closest park isn't 300 metres away, it's 400 metres. That's close, but a fail.
It's a standard. It's a benchmark. And a park at 400 metres is no good; it must be 300 metres or else it may as well be 4 kilometers away. This isn't treating the test as a useful guidance, but as a hard target. As Goodheart's law states: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
When you focus exclusively on satisfying such metrics, you can end up with ineffective policy. Missing the forest for the trees, if you will.
The map does not look plausible to me. I live in Vienna and spent quite a bit of time in the Netherlands. There is absolutely no way that Vienna scores better than Dutch cities when it comes to the question "Can you see three trees when you look out the window?".
Vienna cheekily cheats statistics by counting several adjacent forests as "urban green spaces" within city borders. The roads within the city, however, are mostly barren concrete deserts.
I had a moment a few years ago (while on vacation) after a long flight. We set a blanket out under a huge tree and napped in the park all afternoon. I was staring up at a massive tree for probably 3 or 4 hours straight, basically doing nothing else.
It is remarkable how calming it is to just sit there and stare at a tree.
Now everywhere I live has to have a big tree somewhere nearby. There’s one right outside and I spend at least several minutes, sometimes much longer, just staring at it.
Staring at a tree, 10/10
Had a class reunion recently and we got a tour through our old school building. Of course everything had changed beyond recognition during the past 30 years, except for one thing:
The old tree right outside the window was still the same. I know because I must have stared into it for hundreds of hours while being bored to no end during class. It probably prevented me from going insane. Thank you old tree.
I've started something similar in my life. Chris Boltendhal (Founder of Grave Digger) has been criticizing how streaming services had turned music into a wallpaper, and others have too. Something that's just there in the background, but not fully appreciated.
So now I've been making room in my week for new albums of bands I enjoy and listen to. Just an hour or two of nothing, but listening to this album, while sitting in a hammock or somewhere else entirely relaxed.
I can only recommend this. For example, Heilung(1) or Wardruna(2) are already great on theri own, but one of their new songs, but I was listening to one of their songs in a park over here, sitting at a tree and suddenly a little noise was nearby. Turns out, there was a squirrel looking at me and then scampering by. Later on a little bird also was exasperated I looked at him as he chased a bug. Very fitting to these bands.
Sometimes balancing the speed of our lives indeed seems like a very good idea.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64CACoHNBEI
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEizKmZlUAw
I’ve done this both on and off psychedelics, and both are lovely experiences.
I also dated someone who wasn’t a particularly “crunchy” hippy type, but she did like to randomly hug trees on our walks to show appreciation. I do it now too, there’s something oddly calming and connecting about it - it may look weird, but that’s par for the course for me as it is
There's actually some research to back that up. (Forest bathing & the effects of phytoncides https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2793341/)
Nature, physical touch (even with non-human objects), and being near or touching a big stationary natural object triggers our parasympathetic nervous system too, helps reduce stress.
Everyone should go hug a tree! It's not completely woo woo, there are real biological benefits.
The staring you discovered is actually an old meditation technic. Trees are nice for it, but so can be many other things. A burning candle, the setting sun, a cloud, a river a rock. Important is doing it with intense focus and not get distracted.
A few years ago, I spent a summer renting a 1 bedroom new build apartment in the south part of Seattle. The only outside light or fresh air came from a sliding door that overlooked an interior parking garage. It always smelled like fumes. Couldn't even see the sky from most angles. I was convinced after that that living conditions without access to fresh air and nature are probably one of the more potent causes of neuroticism in city-dwellers. Lack of AC didn't help either when it was hitting the 90s at multiple points that summer.
This is probably the one area that most cities in North Carolina excel at. We don't have great sidewalks or transit, but we have a ton a trees. Less than we used to though. But from my current apartment, I'm closer to seeing 300 trees than 3. The post-hurricane-Hugo effort to buy out houses in flood prone zones and turn them into greenways was probably the single smartest thing Charlotte and the surrounding towns have done (though I'm glad we got our light rail too - too bad for Raleigh). It's a good pattern - protects the natural watershed, gives wildlife a safe place to live, makes flooding less impactful, and creates pleasant away-from-road paths for walking and biking.
> The post-hurricane-Hugo effort to buy out houses in flood prone zones …
Toronto completed a similar initiative after Hurricane Hazel in 1954. A number of neighbourhoods in valleys were not rebuilt after devastating flooding, and the city was left with wonderful green space, especially in the Don Valley. For me, it’s a “top 10” biking experience, to cross Toronto by bicycle along the trail system.
As an aside, it took a minute for me to parse the OP as I initially took it to mean some sort of infrastructure resiliency project (buying outhouses vs buying out houses).
(1) https://trca.ca/news/hurricane-hazel-70-years/
Greenville, South Carolina is also totally covered in trees. I think they have a bunch of laws that new developments have to plant trees, cutting a tree down requires planting multiple others nearby. The whole city is just covered in trees. Even in the suburbs nearby. It’s awesome.
MD has some replace-felled-trees law, but it’s kinda crappy cause trees can be planted somewhere else entirely. So a big development can be treeless.
It’s maybe a good rule of thumb, but as I’m just outside of Helsinki for a while now, I’ve just realized what’s the difference between here and everywhere in central and south Europe: the trees are large and old. Even if there are trees in Vienna, Budapest, Brussels etc they are small, and very young compared to here. Even in the greener small Belgian villages, they are not that green than here, just outside of Helsinki’s city center.
And here, somehow, that stupid excuse that they destroy utility cables and pipes didn’t cause to cut them out. It seems that it’s possible to solve this.
And of course, I’m basically in a forest. There are trees everywhere. The “park” here is an at least 100 years old forest. There is one about 30 meters from here, and about 500 meters an even larger one, where I’ve just lost today.
Of course, the city center is different, but even comparing the outskirts of other cities, this is very-very green.
Depends on what part of Budapest. One of the reasons people like Zugló (14th district) is the many trees. And farther out it's even better, of course.
But a lot of the trees in Hungary just don't grow that big, maybe the most marked difference when I first saw it after growing up in Indiana. When we lived in the 16th district of Budapest, there was one neighborhood I used to walk the dog in that had these massive old American sycamores. Those things were beautiful.
As they say, the best time to plant a tree was 20 (or 200) years ago…
One thing that I really really like about living in Amsterdam, is that we have trees and plants everwhere. Also, for 2 years now, city stopped cutting most of the plant growth in parks and on the side of roads. Its so beautiful green and colourful now and insects are having a great time. I counted this year already 6 different sorts of humblebees in my garden.
Also us Dutchies have this thing called "tegelwippen":
https://www.nk-tegelwippen.nl
It's a competition about which municipality can remove most pavement tiles & replace with greenery.
People do this on their own too - guerilla gardening style. It's not uncommon to ride through a city street, and see a strip of pavement tiles removed & some flowers in there. Or some plants dangling from a pot attached to a street light. As long as postal workers & elderly people with strollers can still pass, most municipalities support this.
We did this in front of out old house in Scheveningen. The hofje had a very small shared space behind us so we pulled up the first foot of bricks in the street side of the house and planted flowers.
Still, apparently Amsterdam somehow doesn't satisfy the 30% criterion at all. Can anyone find detailed numbers? I live there and my street is lined with large trees.
Was thinking the same. There must be some glitch in how this is calculated, as we definitely have >30% tree coverage in every city. Maybe the vast areas of shrub-filled countryside and farmland are skewing the data.
This is a good reminder that "green" does not have to mean perfectly manicured
One of the reasons I moved from London to the town I'm in now was how much effort our local council puts in to maintaining the town's greenery. There's dedicated wildflower areas all over the place to encourage insects, which in turn encourages the bird life.
I think these simplifications end up hurting more than helping.
30% tree cover looks very different depending on the trees your municipality chooses.
For example, Barcelona covers everything with a variety of Platanus, which is easier to keep than other trees, but it’s quite dirty and produces A LOT of pollen. For me, that I’m allergic to it, it just makes the city unavailable for 2-4 weeks every year.
Having smaller plants, with more variety also feels much better than just sprinkling the right amount of massive trees with equal spacing. I’m pretty convinced part of the “we need more green” feeling people get is actually “I need something in my environment to not look like a grid”.
I also think these are harmful simplifications, for several reasons.
First of all, I'm skeptical about the study that proves that people seeing three trees have better mental health. There are so many factors that it's hard to separate one. A solid study would compare families living in the same building, roughly at the same floor, and with similar parameters (family size, income, education, street noise, etc.). Comparisons from different buildings induce too many side factors. I think that collecting this sample would be very hard. I can't access the full-text behind the paywall, so I don't know their methodology, and their abstract is vague, so I fear the paper is meaningless.
Then do people really watch that much through their windows? I'd be surprised that having a glimpse of a few trees at home once a day could change anyone's life.
Even if trees did has a positive impact on mental health, I suppose inciting people to bike or walk (at least partly) to workplaces and stores would dwarf that impact, for mental and physical health.
Lastly, the 30% of tree cover seems arbitrary. For the same percentage, would covering every street with trees have the same impact as keeping trees inside parks? I think the goal to provide places where people go for a walk requires different solutions than the goal to reduce the heat in a concrete jungle.
I think shade is a big factor here. Trees can really cool down a neighborhood.
Big factor is evapotranspiration. Shade is less useful.
> Having smaller plants, with more variety also feels much better than just sprinkling the right amount of massive trees with equal spacing.
The thing people want from trees is shading and general cooling of the environment. Small plants provide much less of that and the summers are increasingly hot.
I was walking in central London and something felt wrong. I couldn't quite tell what though, but I had this constant feeling of unease.
It took me a few days to understand - there are no trees in central London (the City).
Sure, you have a small/big park here and there, but no random trees on side walks. It's literally a (beautiful) concrete/glass wasteland.
Note: I only walked a few of the main streets, I'm sure I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's quite noticeable compared with other cities after you realize it. And there are random trees in other areas, outside City of London.
I'm not sure what parts of London you were in, but there's many trees in London on sidewalks. There's even a specific species for it - the London plane (Platanus × hispanica)
If you're in the very new, constantly rebuilt, concrete jungle that is the very small part of the city, then OK, greenery is going to be hard to spot. Particularly as they tend to nearly always choose the wrong species to plant and aftercare is an afterthought. But your assessment is factually incorrect.
See for yourself. Go to Google maps, drop a good few street view randomly around the city and you'll see that more often than not you'll see trees.
Also, I have a networks in arboriculture who work in the city and they're never short on work.
I'm not doubting your experience of unease or a concrete/glass wasteland (that's yours and not mine to question) but the facts don't support the statement of no random trees on pavements (side walks).
I live in the North, but I'm often in London.
I'd echo the gp's thoughts. There are parts of the City and the West End that are basically devoid of trees.
My biggest bugbear in London is the number of developments that have a "token tree" with one lonely tree in one corner, often doing quite poorly, presumably included to check some item on a planning consent checklist.
Of course, London has many green spaces and on the whole has plenty of trees, it's just they're quite unevenly distributed.
Maybe I'm just in different places. Normally I'm walking from Kings Cross down Grey street and around Covent Garden type areas.
I'm nearly always on foot. Perhaps it's just because I'm also an arborist and I'm hard wired to see trees and avoid places that don't have them?
The token tree thing is a problem. Daisy Barrington was part of webinar on the topic as part of the Arboricultural Associations webinar series [0]. Rarely do the species planted get based on local ecology and or have a solid aftercare plan. They're normally chosen for immediate aesthetic look (Paper / Himalayan birch being the most common) rather than how they'd exist over time.
In short birch being a pioneer species is short lived (80 years), grows fast towards light and dislikes being pruned. Where as oaks, norway maple, London planes ( some of which are "climax species") etc live for longer, grow slower and respond to pruning better, support local ecology better and some don't mind the pollution of an urban environment so much.
[0]: https://youtu.be/Kql22dZlq6o?t=2407
> Of course, London has many green spaces and on the whole has plenty of trees, it's just they're quite unevenly distributed.
I would say they are pretty well distributed through places where people actually tend to live. I live in a pretty average residential area in zone 3 and not only are there nice parks nearby but there are plenty of trees. London is of course massive so I can't say it's the same everywhere but most residential areas I've visited have been quite green. The City and West End (very much commercial/touristy areas) are the exception in my experience.
The City of London, aka "The City", aka "The Square Mile" is not the same thing as Greater London or even what's usually called "Central London." I don't think "Central London" has an agreed exact definition, but it's likely what you thought the parent post meant.
The City is a specific area, more or less covering the same area as the original Roman city. It's the original financial district - though a lot of that moved to Docklands at the tail end of the 1900s.
It's much more built up than even adjacent Westminster ("The City of Westminster") and definitely has far fewer trees.
I don't think the point is that London literally lacks pavement trees. As you say, the London plane is almost part of the city's visual identity in many areas. The interesting thing to me is how uneven the experience can be
Totally, "the city" (EC1/2/3/4) as the GP says is pretty barren, especially the newer built areas.
My guess would be that the bio-diversity net gain calculations put the ecological investment off-site where it was more practical.
It's a shame though as trees and architecture can happily co-exist with each other. Living walls and well kept green areas are entirely possible.
open Google maps at Monument station, find a tree in the area. all the streets in that region of London (let's say 1 sq km) are quite narrow, I would guess there just is not enough space for street trees.
When I drop a pin to Monument station I see a sign, so I spin the view around. In canon street I see two trees (no leaves - winter). They're hard to see as they're behind a black cab.
Clicking once into Canon street towards those trees presents me with the trees. They're now in leaf and look like Sorbus intermedia "swedish whitebeam" and the key id is the margin on the leaf and the green fruits. Photo was taken July/August as prior to that they're in the flowering phase (beautiful to see btw).
When I spin the view down Canon street I see three mature trees in full leaf on pavements / sidewalks.
As I said in another reply, I'm an arborist and I'm hardwired to see trees and perhaps I subconsciously avoid areas that have none, so maybe that's bias on my part.
The article links to the Tree Equity Project (https://uk.treeequityscore.org/map) which has pretty detailed measures for London. Some very central areas do go as low as 2-3%, but they are probably the exception rather than the rule.
Maybe we're both right and wrong at the same time.
Here's a map of the canopy data.
https://apps.london.gov.uk/public-realm-trees/explore
Different countries / geographies have these very different relationship with nature. I remember coming back from small islands in the caribeans, and there nature is overwhelming, the size and density. Just after landing home (france) I felt suddenly naked from the lack of vegetation, there were trees but one every 400m on large avenues. It felt empty.
Agreed when it comes to the City of London (for anyone not familiar, this means the financial centre). It can feel pretty grim walking there at times.
Elsewhere though, possible to plan continuous walks through greenish spaces. One starting at Victoria: Belgravia back streets, Hyde Park, Grosvenor Square, Marylebone High Street, Regents Park, Primrose Hill, Belsize Park, Hampstead Heath.
I am not sure whether GP means the City or central London in general.
It gets greener as you go further out.
One of the big problems in the UK has been the rise of low maintenance gardens, replacing plants with decking concrete, gravel etc.
They mean the City of London. They capitalised the C and everything, it's a thing.
> I was walking in central London .... there are no trees in central London (the City).
It makes me wonder whether they know which bit is actually the City.
later on:
> Sure, you have a small/big park here and there
What big park is there within the City? The whole of the City is smaller than Hyde Park (including Kensington Gardens).
The green space exists, but access to it is often something you have to deliberately route yourself through
The City is not central London, horrible place, dead at the weekend. (Shudder)
On the other hand, when I visit Venice - which is as tight a city as can be, small streets with stone in every direction except the sky - they somehow manage to drop trees in stone squares.
Same shock, different direction, much nicer.
What? London is one of the greenest cities in the world.
City of London != London, the city
The City is indeed pretty non green
I'm talking about trees on sidewalks and streets, not about parks.
The city government tracks data on public realm trees, and has a nice map based visualization of it: https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-and-strategies/environm... and if you zoom in you'll see that many of these are streetside trees.
Personally I have always felt that most Japanese cities are very devoid of urban greenery compared to UK towns and cities.
It technically counts as a forest
No because I planted a tree very close to the window, blocking view of other trees.
So somehow it confirms not seeing three threes is an indicator of the wrong plant coverage ;)
I was in the same situation (I didn't plant the tree though), but just a week ago they cut it down (planned tree removals). Now I can see 20 trees.
I live in a rain forest, so this post confused me for a minute. I was expecting some kind of on-screen optical illusion, but it turned to be asking about actual physical trees outside my window.
Yeah, I can see trees. I can see about fifty trees without standing up from my desk. I cut down more than three trees a month, probably. The weirdest ones are yagrumo - in about five years they can be fifty feet tall and the wood is so soft you can cut them down with a butter knife, just about. Before moving here, I'd never really considered that the Venn circles of "tree" and "weed" can overlap.
What do you think of life there in general? Do you think it's a reasonable idea, or one of those things that sound great on paper but then turns out only very specific types of people will actually enjoy it.
Christopher Alexander has a pattern: Light From Two Sides[0], that is similar.
[0] https://www.patternlanguage.com/apl/aplsample/apl159/apl159....
Hah, looking out my window, I can see about 300 trees, and it’d be more if it weren’t for all the trees in the way. The house is next to a park that’s designed for walking in, with lots of twisty pathways between trees and bushes to give you the feeling that you’re not in a manufactured space.
I just reflected a bit on the fact that there’s essentially nothing but foliage and slivers of sky visible from the windows of the apartment I currently live in, unless you’re right next to a window getting a particularly wide view. Perks of living right at the edge of a neighborhood originally built literally in the middle of forest.
Tree cover is great but I wish cities would just consider shade a bit more. As the world heats up, it's insane that so many places humans need to be for extended amounts of time have enough shade for a handful of people at best and often nothing. I'm thinking long sidewalks, waiting areas, playgrounds.
Long sidewalks could also be covered with solar roofs for shade, but trees have the advantage that they don't block sunlight in winter without leaves, when sun is nice (in colder climates).
Some photos would be really awesome. What does a view in an area that passes the test look like compared to one that doesn't? 3 trees doesn't sound like a lot, I don't have a good mental concept of this.
Here you go. Hot off the press for you. My house which passes the test.
https://jamiecurle.com/posts/trees-3-30-300
Northumberland, UK.
indeed, i can see more than three trees, but the tree cover is probably... 1%?
Yes. I live in a "forest community" in the outskirts of Portland, OR. But I got a chuckle thinking what do you define as a "tree"? I have three Douglas firs that are big enough that if you cut them down you could build a small house out of the lumber from each one or a medium sized one from all three. I have a similar number of big leaf maples that are not as tall but have huge canopies. Then a whole bunch that are more "urban" sized trees, magnolias, dog woods, Japanese maples. Tons of tree "plants" that are working their way up but I would not consider trees yet. Then the shrubs that are pretending to be trees, camellias, rhododendrons, et. All on a half acre. Then there are the thousands on the hill side across a small valley...
Esbo / Espoo is an odd one out, of those four. The three others look like the olden European cities you'd expect, but you'll have a hard time getting around in Espoo without a car. There are plenty of beautiful neighborhoods in Espoo, but it's basically a large spread of separate suburbs rather than a city in the way the rest are. The actual "Espoo Center" is not very green and flowery either, and it's not really thought of as an actual city center.
Helsinki has a lot of parks, and also housing companies tend to have trees in their gardens, along with trees alongside many of the bigger roads. But even so it's a reasonably dense city.
Espoo is much more spread out, and the areas between them are all full of trees and greenery. So I very much agree with you, I've visited Espoo a few times but without a car I wouldn't want to live there.
On the other hand it does have a massive central park in the middle which has all kinds of animals, including deer.
I agree that the public transport is not particularly great if you don’t live on the metro or train line. It’s usually faster to drive and even with one person cheaper even when paying for gasoline and parking. Public transport is ridiculously overpriced in Finland.
Even Helsinki leaves much to be desired on that front, the coverage is okay but the ticket prices are ridiculous. It’s not feasible to drive in the center though, takes forever to get anywhere.
Singapore here, checking all the boxes. 200m from a neighborhood park with many trees, and ~700m from a GARGANTUAN park, Jurong Lake Gardens, over 4 km in length with many times that in pathways through gardens and around a lake.
I can't see any trees from my window right now. But that's just because I'm in the groundfloor of a shophouse (in Singapore).
Yes, it's pretty green here.
Now, if we could ban street parking like Japan did [0], and perhaps take some more inspiration from Dutch traffic planning..
[0] Ideally we'd get the Gahmen out of the car parking business completely.
London here: can see 12 trees within 30m from the back, 10 from the front; 50m from a neighbourhood park, 300m from Burgess Park (140 acres), probably 700m from Southwark Park (60 acres) (all of these are well tree-d)
Yes, Singapore is great for that. But to be fair with the other cities, it’s very hard _not_ to have abundant vegetation in tropical rainforest climate. Everything grows rapidly and stops at nothing in its way.
In other climates, like European ones, this becomes much more complex. Germany struggles even to keep its forests alive with long stretches of missing rain, higher temperatures, and new pests. Single trees in cities constantly die. Spain is in large parts a desert etc.
I really hope we find a solution/adapted plants to keep cities from heating up so much.
FWIW, some fast growing non-native trees now grow trivially in central Europe too.
Ailanthus[0] is invasive as heck and Paulownia[1] grows everywhere too.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ailanthus_altissima
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulownia_tomentosa
> Yes, Singapore is great for that. But to be fair with the other cities, it’s very hard _not_ to have abundant vegetation in tropical rainforest climate. Everything grows rapidly and stops at nothing in its way.
Eh, have a look at other tropical cities like Johor Bahru or Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur and you can see that it's very much possible to have way less greenery than Singapore.
The recent trouble with the Borkenkäfer was just a consequence of monoculture. Germany doesn't struggle with keeping forests alive: it's normal at any one time for individual trees in forests to die. Decaying dead wood is important for the ecosystems.
Less than Singapore for sure. Less than European cities, I’m not so sure. I don’t have the numbers but if you do an image search of Jakarta (probably one of the worst vegetation-wise and boasting a population of a quarter of Germany) it still has trees in every picture and many more than let’s say Frankfurt or Madrid. The latter has many photos without a single tree.
79% of all German trees are sick. Monocultures and beetles play a role but the problem is much bigger than that: https://www.bmleh.de/DE/themen/wald/wald-in-deutschland/wald...
> The recent trouble with the Borkenkäfer was just a consequence of monoculture.
Even worse. It was monoculture of trees that aren't even native to the climate zone. The trees were imported from Scandinavia for their superior lumber quality, and were on edge even without the added stress from droughts and heat waves.
It's much much more complex than that. Climate is only one factor and by far not the most important one. Prosperity and structure of the city plays a much more important role. Singapore is an outlier because it's a rich country on an island the size of a city.
Big cities in Europe are usually surrounded by more rural areas in most of Europe for historical reasons (surrounding farmlands used to feed the city), lessening the need for city parks and greenery since the countryside was surrounding the city. If the city IS the country and even isolated on an island, that's of course not an option.
Another factor is also rooted in history. Like most cities in Europe, Singapore is old, though most of its growth happened in the past 60 years with proper urban planning. Europe's cities on the other hand grew over centuries without any kind of modern urban planning and the pressure of rebuilding quickly after the many devastating wars didn't help either.
Finally there's the issue of money - being one of the richest countries/cities on Earth helps tremendously with building a nice, liveable urban environment compared to some cities struggling to keep basic infrastructure running.
> Every home, school and office should have a view of at least three trees, be in a neighbourhood with 30% tree cover, and be within 300 metres of a park.
The middle one seems a lot harder to me than the other two.
Me too. The native trees around here aren't very tall and don't do a lot of covering. I'd love 30% but my neighborhood just isn't rich enough to have each yard contributing to a forest to that degree.
Maybe if we buried the power lines and turned the utility easements into open space.
If you need help finding trees near you, you can check TreeFinder.net.
In our small town, the local compliance officer is colluding with a tree-cutting company that has a contract with the city. They lie and claim trees are "dead" and they're constantly cutting them down unnecessarily at the taxpayer's expense. Pretty soon we're going to look like one of those new suburbs that are just concrete and grass, but with old houses.
That first map seems to map quite closely to koppen climate zones across the continent. Its hard to say whether the climate is decisive here because climate is a big influencer of urban design. However, its interesting that in Australia its the two Mediterranean climate cities (Perth and Adelaide) which frequently get labelled as worse for tree cover compared to the sub tropical east coast cities.
Thanks for sharing! I had no idea about the “3-30-300 test,” even though I always pay attention to city trees.
I can, however, easily explain the division in Europe: In Italy (for example, in Palermo), the vigorous growth of many species very often leads to significant damage to infrastructure.
Here in Vienna, there’s a directory of trees[1] where you can see, among other things, the species and age.
[1] https://baumkarte.at/
As Alex Shigo likes to point out, it's too easy to try and explain infrastructure damage in terms of trees, while giving expansive soils a free pass.
That's like explaining frost-jacking of a wall in terms of temperature instead of hydrology.
I read Don Quixote and thought it might be fun to visit some parts of Spain mentioned in the books. Then after looking at some maps and seeing a stark lack of trees, I decided I wouldn't enjoy the trip.
It didn't help that the King used them all up in the war with England a couple hundred years after Cervantes. A lot of Europe is trying to reforest now and hopefully that process continues.
We don't have the spectacular red Maple or Ponderosa pine forests that America has, this is true, but if this helps, some places in the North and Center of Spain (and many more in the rest of Europe) still look pretty much like Lothlorien. You just need to know where to go. Check Muniellos (oak), Tejera de Tosande (ancient yews and beech) or Irati forest (beech) for example.
The inner center and hot south can be more dusty and discouraging, but you can still be surprised by a few, not well known, jewels like Cabañeros, Valsain's pine forest, Alto Tajo, or Grazalema and the last relict Mediterranean -humid- forests in Cadiz. Plenty also of lagoons, marshes and aquatic ecosystems to visit, like Doñana or Daimiel. The biosphere reserve Hayedo de Montejo is located in Don Quixote's land.
I live next to a greenbelt in Florida, so yes.
I would have like to see the map of cities that matches this 3-30-300 rule.
I'm in a part of Los Angeles that matches 3-30, but virtually none of the city matches 300, and it's my least favorite thing about LA.
I like to use wildlife as a proxy for the quality of a location. If you can see things like rabbits and squirrels on a regular basis, you are probably doing reasonably ok. I have to put up fences and other barriers or the deer will eat everything in my yard.
I've seen suburban development that would easily satisfy the three tree test from any window on any property, but they still come off as desolate wastes. The age of the trees seems to be a non trivial factor.
Yeah wildlife & its variety is a good indicator for how much an area is disturbed by humans.
For this reason, I'd prefer to have compact cities with a good amount of high-rise buildings and city parks dotted in between. As opposed to large sprawling suburban zones.
That leaves more space for natural areas outside cities where people are few & far between.
@steerpike on HN coined the "time to sheep" metric, a measure of how long you have to travel before you're surrounded by sheep[0], which correlates reasonably well with quality of living.
Alas, doesn't work very well outside of britain, but it's a good metric :)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42802744
Anywhere tropical is pretty far out from sheep, so that metric is clearly broken.
I wonder why they didn't mention Atlanta, which probably meets the criteria except perhaps some parts are a little more than 300m from a park. The canopy here is about 47%.
I learned from geoguessr pro, Rainbolt, that every tree and its species is mapped for NYC: https://tree-map.nycgovparks.org/tree-map
Now I am curious if there is a dataset for the location of every tree in every city in the world? https://overpass-turbo.eu?
'pm215 posted [0] earlier which does seem to be individual locations and species for London.
[0] https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-and-strategies/environm...
What struck me is that the "three trees from your window" part sounds almost trivial until you actually test it
I opened up Google Street for Valencia (claimed to be the worst in the article) and I struggle to find a street that plausibly fails this test.
Half dozen trees directly outside my window, but London Ontario is "the forest city" with an initiative to get 27% tree canopy to 34% by 2065
From one window? From all windows? And how far from the window they should be visible, and how far can you look? Can you stick your head out? Can we cheat by planting a few very tall trees that can be seen from very far away? :)
> People who can see at least three trees from their window have better mental health than those who can't. It seems like the easiest of the three goals to achieve
Here we go, correlation does not equal causation. Simple as that. Planting 3 trees will not give you a better mental health nor will planting 10 trees. But moving in to an environment where many trees grow in front of your window will probably change a lot more than just putting trees in your view.
‘Beneath the pavement, the beach!’
and three years later, the beech has Ganoderma due to root compaction!
Montevideo, Uruguay here. I can see 3, 300, and 3.000 for sure. Not sure if 30.000. May well be.
Alternative approach: Screw parks.
Parks are not nature. Parks are a sanitized parody of the natural world. They are a simulation meant to make us humans feel better about ourselves. They are gated grass farms, not wild areas, useful only to a select few animals (nothing bigger than a raccoon). Creating a park inside a urban area diverts land from actual nature. So, rather than build parks inside cities, we should develop that land and make our cities smaller.
We don't have to go all 40k hive world. Rather, if parks are kept at the urban periphery and/or are connected to each other, then they can thrive as actual natural space. We have modern transport technology. We can bring the people to the park rather than construct a park near the people and thereby deprive Bambi and all his friends of yet another acre of true wilderness.
Sounds like someone who never tried to walk in a true wild forest.
Where if don't have a machete you ain't going nowhere. And while you're pitifully trying to make some way, a bear bites your ass off.
I'm in Australia and I have view on a mountain so I see too many trees to count. Proximity to a forest was top priority for me and my wife.
Having lived in Europe for many years before, this is something that's most striking about Australia. I live in a state with one of the highest population densities and yet it still feels very sparsely populated relatively speaking.
I'm happy to report I can see much more than 3 out every window.
No data for NW Scotland, presumably because 140mph winds for four weeks of the year (in the local language we call that "January") is incompatible with large trees.
For sure, it was one of things that got me about Orkney.
Mind you, wars and sheep did have a pretty devastating effect on the Caledonian woodland cover of the highlands. The current population of the red deer aren't helping with natural regeneration. This is one of the reasons for the case for re-introducing predator species.
But that's a complex topic with no simple answers and easy divisions.
There is already a predator species that eats red deer. Just up our venison consumption!
This is very much a true thing in the UK. Deer are overpopulated and causing damage to their environment.
As you have pointed out the solution is to eat more venison, but most local butchers stock hardly any of it because of low demand.
I do not understand the low demand. It can be cheaper than beef and tastes good and is lean. Maybe it needs some promotion? The same arguments that have promoted vegetarianism (healthier and green) are applicable.
British eating habits have become really narrow over the years. Its hard to find offal (healthier and greener than just eating muscle meat). Rabbit seems to have pretty much disappeared too.
It's so good for you and it's incredibly sustainable because those damn things breed like rabbits.
Re offal I actually just did a really nice mutton liver curry the other day, something you won't find in your average "brown spicy glop for white people" takeaway but which you can get in the south side of Glasgow. Absolutely brilliant stuff, even better the second day if you can leave it alone that long. Four quid for about half a kilo of lamb liver out of the reduced section in the supermarket!
Yes! keep up the good work :)
> I only walked a few of the main streets
Person walks along main roads in London and complains they see no trees. Meanwhile in other news .... :)
London is one of the most tree-ridden cities on this earth, so I dread to think what "main streets" you were walking along.
currently where i am right now its like i am living in a forest , yeah but when i was living in the city it feels like that trees dont exist anymore
Am I the only one that stared at the photo at the top for 3 minutes trying to see three trees in the photo because I thought it was a post about optical illusions? No, oh ok.
American zoning forbids taller ~6 story residential building and trades open green space parks for shorter, 1-2 story buildings. The lower density means people are further away from the few parks that do exist too.
Are zoning laws in the United States at the federal level? Or by township and city?
Does every city in America have the rules you mention, or specific ones?
> and trades open green space parks for shorter, 1-2 story buildings.
Misleading. American cities have lots of short buildings, but they also have more land to put stuff on, be it trees or buildings.
> The lower density means people are further away from the few parks that do exist too.
In some parts of the US, this is absolutely true. In others, it absolutely is not. Silicon Valley is easily the worst place I've ever lived in this regard. As a Midwesterner, I had never lived more than ~400m from a park, even in the suburbs. In Santa Clara, I'm more than 1.5km from the nearest public park.
Most Midwestern and Eastern cities do not match the "sprawl" archetype that most techies associate with America. Look up "Urbs in Horto."
> American zoning forbids taller ~6 story residential building
You're allowed to build up to 5 stories out of lumber. So a common archetype for American apartments is a first floor of retail space made of concrete, which serves as a base for 5 stick-built floors of apartments. That's where 6 floors comes from.
But the statement on its own is false. You're certainly allowed to build taller, permits permitting (heh), it's just that 5-over-1 is a local maxima for cost efficiency vs. likelihood of getting permits.
There are very few cities with laws on the books that prohibit building taller than 6 floors. The issue is that you have to get approval from the city to build things, and residents get angry when you try to build high-rises. So, permits get rejected.
This is an important distinction because the route to change is wildly different. We need community attitudes to change about dense housing developments, we don't need to change any law that's currently on the books.
At the local level. And yes, these local zoning laws are strikingly similar in their opposition to multi-story residential.
Well, I live up high in a penthouse with an amazing river view and hundreds of maple trees that also change colors throughout the seasons. I wish I could share it but I am certain some of you might geolocate it.
Edit: for canada map since the article ignores the country entirely, check https://www.globalforestwatch.org/map/country/CAN/
The "3 trees out of a window" sounds like an idiotic criterion because it ignores the elevation factor. In the exact same building, it's very likely you will see a couple dozen trees from a 10th floor window, and only one from a ground floor window. But which situation actually puts you closer to the flora?
Totally random numbers picked up to be a catching name for trying to get celebrity.
Could have been 200 meters or 500 meters or 4 trees or 2 or flowers.
This is the kind of ideology that is ruining public policies instead of being grounded on concrete and scientific facts and goals.
An exaggeration. The numbers just function as a rule of thumb intended to inspire and motivate action.
I agree that that's the best way to take these kind of "rules", but that's the opposite of how the blog author presents it:
> the 3-30-300 test — a standard that has become the go-to for solving a universal urban problem
> 3-30-300 is a catchy, straightforward test that sets a clear benchmark for measuring equal access to nature.
> I found that my closest park isn't 300 metres away, it's 400 metres. That's close, but a fail.
It's a standard. It's a benchmark. And a park at 400 metres is no good; it must be 300 metres or else it may as well be 4 kilometers away. This isn't treating the test as a useful guidance, but as a hard target. As Goodheart's law states: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
When you focus exclusively on satisfying such metrics, you can end up with ineffective policy. Missing the forest for the trees, if you will.
There! Are! Three! Trees!
-- Picard
Looks great, are they interactive maps showing these data?
ONE
The map does not look plausible to me. I live in Vienna and spent quite a bit of time in the Netherlands. There is absolutely no way that Vienna scores better than Dutch cities when it comes to the question "Can you see three trees when you look out the window?".
Vienna cheekily cheats statistics by counting several adjacent forests as "urban green spaces" within city borders. The roads within the city, however, are mostly barren concrete deserts.