Number of Trees Predict Wealth

[erfalf]

http://persquaremile.com/2012/05/24/income-inequality-seen-from-space/
http://persquaremile.com/2012/05/17/urban-trees-reveal-income-inequality/

It was one of those duh, that was obvious moments, but interesting none the less. People enjoy feeling cozy when walking down the street. They want buildings on one side of them, parked cars on the other and trees above them.

[TheArtist]

Interesting factoid... NYC almost 20% of its land area is park space,  Tulsa just over 6% is. 

http://cloud.tpl.org/pubs/ccpe_Acreage_and_Employees_Data_2010.pdf   

[Conan71]

Interesting factoid... NYC almost 20% of its land area is park space,  Tulsa just over 6% is. 

http://cloud.tpl.org/pubs/ccpe_Acreage_and_Employees_Data_2010.pdf   

So thaaaat's why parking and housing are so damned expensive in NYC! 

[nathanm]

So thaaaat's why parking and housing are so damned expensive in NYC! 

It probably has more to do with zoning laws restricting building heights in much of the city. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me, but I don't live there.

[erfalf]

I'm not saying Tulsa needs to be like those cities in the examples. But just think how much more pleasant it is to walk down a tree lined street. I know in B'Ville there are several street with mature trees that are very nice to walk down, then there are those with no trees. And even with a complete wall of buildings it is still like walking in a frying pan especially in the heat around here.

[Red Arrow]

So a simple solution to poverty is to plant trees.  Wow, have we ever wasted a bunch of time and money.

[Red Arrow]

So thaaaat's why parking and housing are so damned expensive in NYC! 

Government manipulation of available space to run up the price of everything thereby raising tax revenue.   I think that's illegal in the business world.

[erfalf]

So a simple solution to poverty is to plant trees.  Wow, have we ever wasted a bunch of time and money.

Not to be critical, but a more appropriate assessment would have been to say that a simple solution to solve blighted neighborhoods. This never had anything to do with poverty. That is a personal thing. This was only a discussion about how trees may or may not make a place more desirable, therefore more valuable.

[Red Arrow]

Not to be critical, but a more appropriate assessment would have been to say that a simple solution to solve blighted neighborhoods.

OK

[Red Arrow]

Not to be critical, but a more appropriate assessment would have been to say that a simple solution to solve blighted neighborhoods. This never had anything to do with poverty. That is a personal thing. This was only a discussion about how trees may or may not make a place more desirable, therefore more valuable.

I wonder how many well-off people live in blighted neighborhoods.  There's bound to be a list of wealthy people just waiting to live in a blighted place. I'm not talking about fixed up former blighted neighborhoods either.  I also wonder how many really poor people live in really nice neighborhoods.  Probably not too many.  If you raise the quality of the neighborhood they live in, those poor people will rise with it.  No need for an education or workplace skills or a job.  Just plant trees.

Trees correlate to nice neighborhood.  Nice neighborhood generally does not correlate with extreme poverty.

It makes as much sense as much of what I see on this forum.  Everyone gets their own choice of what those posts are.  I would expect a w-i-d-e variety of choices.

[rdj]

Drive through Florence Park then drive though the streets just north of Reservoir Hill and west of Cincinnati.  The housing stock is exactly the same.  The socio-economic differences aside, they feel completely different because there is nary a tree on these streets.  They've been wiped out over the years and as a result the sense of place is entirely different.

[PonderInc]

Tulsa has taken some huge hits when it comes to our urban forest. 

Anyone around in the 80's will remember that Dutch Elm disease wiped out a huge percent of our city's trees.  (Thanks for trimming with infected equipment, PSO contractors!).  American Elms were beloved for their graceful, arching shape, and were favored as street trees because they shaded the street.  A devastating number of these trees succumbed to the disease and most were never replaced.

The recent ice storm was also a crushing blow.  A year after the storm, I took a friend (who had grown up in Maple Ridge, but then moved away) back to her old neighborhood.  She couldn't believe how different everything looked b/c the trees had been savaged by the storm.  And that's in a neighborhood that can generally afford to maintain trees.

Obviously, when street trees are damaged or die in less affluent neighborhoods, people are less likely to replant.  In neighborhoods that are largely rental houses, you can kiss the urban forest goodbye.  Landlords just don't seem to be willing to invest in tree maintenance.  And even when people replant, it takes generations to replace what was lost.

Some years ago, I was riding my bike down 3rd street between downtown and TU.  You could see all these dead stumps of huge trees that had been cut down.  Practically every yard had a stump, cut off even with the ground.  A sad reminder of what once was that had been lost.

[Conan71]

It probably has more to do with zoning laws restricting building heights in much of the city. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me, but I don't live there.

When's your birthday?  I want to give you a gift certificate for a sense of humor. 

[nathanm]

When's your birthday?  I want to give you a gift certificate for a sense of humor. 

I had a sense of humor, but it ran off and eloped with my sense of decency many years ago.

[Conan71]

I had a sense of humor, but it ran off and eloped with my sense of decency many years ago.

I've been in sales all my life. What's a sense of decency?