New York City Greener Than You'd Think
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 08. 6.07
Photo credit: MacRonin47
A tree grows in Brooklyn—and more than a half a million more on the streets of New York City; that's 20 percent more trees than there were a decade ago.
The 2005-2006 tree census was the work of around 1,000 volunteers who spent two summers walking around Gotham counting trees. Adrian Benepe, the city's Parks Commissioner called the recently analyzed results of the census—which found about 100,000 more trees shading city pavements than there were a decade earlier—"hopeful," especially when each tree translates into money in the bank.
For every dollar invested in planting a tree, there's more than a $5 return, Benepe said, citing an an analysis by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service.
A tree equals energy savings from natural air cooling and an insulation effect. Trees also remove carbon dioxide, improve air quality, manage storm waters (by absorbing moisture), and increase property value.
The next step: To plant another 1 million city trees in the next decade. "If you look at aerial photos, New York looks a lot greener than you would imagine," the commissioner said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The stereotype of a New York street is a Manhattan street, whereas in fact the vast majority of New York is heavily treed, with maple, oak and sycamore trees in front of single-family homes."
With all the trees on public and private properties, including parks, down for the count, New York City has an estimated 5.2 million trees, or 24 percent canopy cover. This compares with Chicago's 11 percent and Atlanta's 27 percent, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Planting each tree will cost the city an average of $1,250; $250 million in city money has already been allocated toward Mayor Michael Bloomberg's long-term goal to have 1 million new trees planted by 2017. ::AP
See also: ::Thirsty Trees Drink Carbon Dioxide Instead, ::Why Offset With Trees When Fossil Fuels Are To Blame?, and ::Kids "Think Trees"
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Despite the comments in this article, the streets in Manhattan are completely lined with trees. Look at Manhattan from overhead and you'll see that every street is covered in green. Contrast that with San Francisco, Philadelphia, LA - or Tokyo, Paris and most other major cities in the world and you'll see that Manhattan is one of the greenest metropolii in the world.
Why? Sufficiently wide sidewalks help. So do the fact that few brownstone townhouses in Manhattan have garages, so there are few driveways breaking up the street. Contrast that to a city like San Francisco, where there's a driveway every 15', making it difficult to put in a tree that doesn't interfere with driveways and/or utilities.
Additionally, rather than undergrounding utilities, SF also has many overhead power, cable, and electrified bus lines that make it even more difficult to add trees.
If only all of our cities could be as green as Manhattan.
I wonder how that compares to various European cities? Does anyone have any comparable stats?
I don't know about Europe but a comparison with India's capital shows that New York's "achievement" is actually quite dismal.
NYC tree cover grew up a mere 20% in a decade while Delhi's tree cover grew 1300% in an eight year period (1997-05). Sounds too good to be true but the satellite survey done every two years by the Forest Service of India has consistently shown increased tree cover over the decade.
This is largely due to an intensive tree-plantation drive by the Delhi government every year in which govt. nurseries distribute free tree saplings to citizens, schools and institutions during the monsoon season. The govt has also committed to plant 10 trees for every tree that has to be cut down.
While NYC plans to plant 1 million trees over the next decade, Delhi planted 1.8 million saplings just last year. Both cities have roughly the same area and similar population densities.
This is what happens when tourists refuse to leave Time Square. They don't see the true color of the city.
Central park helps a lot in adding to tree counts. I doubt Delhi had very many trees, if any, before this massive planting streak described above.
Delhi has always had a lot of trees since the British occupation. Tree cover in 1997 before the drive began was 26 sq km. Today the total tree cover stands at around 20-25% (comparable to NYC) and is still set to grow as nine city forests are under development covering 262 hectares.
Here's the story I meant to link in the previous comment: City’s green belt grew by 13 times in 8 years