Trees are political too.
April 26, 2018 10:30 AM Subscribe
You can see the border between Palo Alto/Menlo Park/Atherton and the less wealthy neighbouring EPA, North Fair Oaks and Redwood City on Google Maps very easily by where the green stops.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:40 AM on April 26, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by Space Coyote at 10:40 AM on April 26, 2018 [6 favorites]
We've been househunting in Seattle, and the change in foliage really shows the boundaries of redlining.
I feel so conflicted about the whole thing, being a POC who in times past would have lived in Rainier Valley by fiat. But public transportation down there to work is logistically challenging, and so we're looking at neighborhoods that end up having very landscaped yards.
posted by ntartifex at 11:15 AM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
I feel so conflicted about the whole thing, being a POC who in times past would have lived in Rainier Valley by fiat. But public transportation down there to work is logistically challenging, and so we're looking at neighborhoods that end up having very landscaped yards.
posted by ntartifex at 11:15 AM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]
As discussed in Environmentalists face challenges trying to plant in less-green neighborhoods, it's important to both educate local residents about benefits of trees that they may be unaware of and to learn about and address real issues that outsiders may not have considered:
Doris Gudger of Anacostia is among those who see little to like about lots of trees. When city crews showed up one recent day and planted some in front of her rowhouse in Southeast Washington, she wanted them gone.posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 11:16 AM on April 26, 2018 [20 favorites]
The pollen would aggravate her allergies, she said. The leaves would be a pain to rake. The shade would draw drug dealers. And, she feared, soon would follow affluent gentrifiers and higher taxes, pushing out older residents like herself.
“To me, the trees create more problems than when they weren’t there,” said Gudger, 61, a retired secretary.
Apart from the benefits to health, crime rates, etc that this article mentions, there are emotional/spiritual messages that come with having, or not having, a beautiful a place to live. Not caring about the aesthetics of an environment is one of the many ways our society tells people they don't matter.
I agree with you, but there's a flipside to this. I was recently at an academic conference in a discipline with an interest in urban space and there was an evening panel about fighting gentrification. It was a great panel because they invited not just academics from a number of disciplines, but policy makers and, like, off-the-street community members (something I've never seen done before for an academic round table but that hugely enriched the conversation.) Something I've never thought about with gentrification but that was repeated throughout the room by folks who had reason to know or were directly working with populations on the front lines of gentrification was, We are stuck in the trap of improvement. We care about our communities, and we want to strengthen them, and provide community resources, and make them beautiful. But the minute we plant a community garden, start a community bakery, advocate for a new library building, get more independent grocery stores to combat the food desert.... we lose our neighborhood. Shamefully it had never occurred to me from my place of privilege that every step towards beautification and improvement that these communities take raises property values, makes their spaces more desirable by higher income residents, invites in bigger businesses.
In that sense, being neglected is a defense mechanism. Sure, we don't have a park nearby and we have to buy most of our food from a gas station and there's broken glass everywhere.... but at least we can afford to live here.
To get back to the article, I don't work directly on this topic but I'm a PhD student working in a very related area and in some places the relationship between community health, urban form, and income is even more direct. In Phoenix there is a direct correlation between the mean surface temperature of an area and average income of that area, with the summertime temperature decreasing by 0.5C for every $10,000 increase in income. Your neighborhood's wealth determines how hot you are.
posted by WidgetAlley at 11:22 AM on April 26, 2018 [29 favorites]
I agree with you, but there's a flipside to this. I was recently at an academic conference in a discipline with an interest in urban space and there was an evening panel about fighting gentrification. It was a great panel because they invited not just academics from a number of disciplines, but policy makers and, like, off-the-street community members (something I've never seen done before for an academic round table but that hugely enriched the conversation.) Something I've never thought about with gentrification but that was repeated throughout the room by folks who had reason to know or were directly working with populations on the front lines of gentrification was, We are stuck in the trap of improvement. We care about our communities, and we want to strengthen them, and provide community resources, and make them beautiful. But the minute we plant a community garden, start a community bakery, advocate for a new library building, get more independent grocery stores to combat the food desert.... we lose our neighborhood. Shamefully it had never occurred to me from my place of privilege that every step towards beautification and improvement that these communities take raises property values, makes their spaces more desirable by higher income residents, invites in bigger businesses.
In that sense, being neglected is a defense mechanism. Sure, we don't have a park nearby and we have to buy most of our food from a gas station and there's broken glass everywhere.... but at least we can afford to live here.
To get back to the article, I don't work directly on this topic but I'm a PhD student working in a very related area and in some places the relationship between community health, urban form, and income is even more direct. In Phoenix there is a direct correlation between the mean surface temperature of an area and average income of that area, with the summertime temperature decreasing by 0.5C for every $10,000 increase in income. Your neighborhood's wealth determines how hot you are.
posted by WidgetAlley at 11:22 AM on April 26, 2018 [29 favorites]
I hope feedback like Doris Gudger's is taken seriously. Scientific American recently had an interesting blog post on how the shift to using all-male street trees has increased the pollen load and exacerbated allergies. It was an eye opener for me.
posted by rube goldberg at 11:45 AM on April 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
posted by rube goldberg at 11:45 AM on April 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
Seems to me that while all neighborhoods should have some trees, certainly not all of them should have a huge tree canopy with all the gloom it provides. Houses are dark enough inside. Parks have lots of trees. There needs to be somewhere you can go to see more than just a narrow line of sunlight and blue sky without having to drive all the way out to the mall or some other big parking lot in the exurbs. In neighborhoods that are nicely landscaped but do not have a tree canopy, grey days are brighter and neighborhoods are less damp and claustrophobic.
posted by serena15221 at 12:35 PM on April 26, 2018
posted by serena15221 at 12:35 PM on April 26, 2018
Clearly opinions are divided on trees. I love them and wish my street had more of them. Apparently it used to have a complete canopy of ornamental cherry trees, but poor maintenance caused many of them to fall over. Now it is a patchwork of the remaining cherries and newer trees of varying types, with many former tree plots still empty.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:47 PM on April 26, 2018
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:47 PM on April 26, 2018
I think about what Miko wrote a lot. Part of why I moved to my current neighborhood is that it's full of trees, yet at least broadly affordable. When I lived in North Philadelphia, I was ravenous for trees and green and beauty. (There's plenty of beauty in North Philly, incidentally, though less where I was living.) It felt like if I wanted to see more than two trees at once, I had to go out of my way, by bike or public transit, because it was too far to walk to get to a truly green space.
Now I have almost no direct light, but all I see are trees out of 90% of my windows, and it smells like green when it rains, and I can deal with the lack of light, and I'm amazed at how much happier I am to come home.
Where I live now is also more expensive, of course.
All that said -- the flipsides are really, really good to learn about, and massive thanks to everyone who has pointed them out.
posted by kalimac at 12:50 PM on April 26, 2018 [6 favorites]
Now I have almost no direct light, but all I see are trees out of 90% of my windows, and it smells like green when it rains, and I can deal with the lack of light, and I'm amazed at how much happier I am to come home.
Where I live now is also more expensive, of course.
All that said -- the flipsides are really, really good to learn about, and massive thanks to everyone who has pointed them out.
posted by kalimac at 12:50 PM on April 26, 2018 [6 favorites]
In 2015 I created a site for DC residents to visualize gaps in the city's tree canopy, request tree plantings from the local Urban Forestry Administration, and volunteer as caretakers for new trees.
It ended up going locally viral (DCist, WaPo, WAMU, various neighborhood associations, and, oddly, USA Today) and resulted in about 1000 or so additional requests over the same period the previous year. I haven't renewed the domain, but you can still check it out in the Internet Archive. I also wrote a short summary of what went down (with graphs):
The site was an interesting experiment. I got a lot of feedback from people keen to be more involved in tree caretaking, which is always a welcome. It sure did make me glad that UFA is being proactive about addressing inequities, though, and that it's not just up to whomever is most online.
posted by waninggibbon at 1:15 PM on April 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
It ended up going locally viral (DCist, WaPo, WAMU, various neighborhood associations, and, oddly, USA Today) and resulted in about 1000 or so additional requests over the same period the previous year. I haven't renewed the domain, but you can still check it out in the Internet Archive. I also wrote a short summary of what went down (with graphs):
You might be aware that there’s quite a bit of variation in tree coverage across DC’s 8 wards. In wards 1 and 2, only about 2% of tree plots are empty, versus wards 5, 7, and 8, with vacancy percentages in the mid to high teens.So most of the wealthier areas are pretty much at capacity right now (as far as public sidewalks are concerned) and whatever gaps exist there are mostly due to regular die-off. I know that the UFA has been targeting 8,000 new plantings per season, with the goal of closing the canopy discrepancy.
After getdctrees.org’s launch, ward 5, which had the greatest number of available plots—3,728—also received the most planting requests—242. Wards 7 and 8 continued to lag behind, submitting 86 and 27 requests, respectively. Notably, however, they submitted only 25 and 4 requests over the same period last year!
Ward 1, despite having just 162 open plots on April 20th, submitted 128 planting requests.
The site was an interesting experiment. I got a lot of feedback from people keen to be more involved in tree caretaking, which is always a welcome. It sure did make me glad that UFA is being proactive about addressing inequities, though, and that it's not just up to whomever is most online.
posted by waninggibbon at 1:15 PM on April 26, 2018 [11 favorites]
Seems to me that while all neighborhoods should have some trees, certainly not all of them should have a huge tree canopy with all the gloom it provides. Houses are dark enough inside.
As a very pale, easily burned, skin-cancer-prone, summer SAD-having, generally sun-hating type: no they're not. I'd live underground if I could.
Trees reduce reliance on air conditioning by a lot. We had to cut down a big one in our back yard that was old and threatening to crush us or our neighbors, and we can see the difference it made on our electric bills in the summer.
posted by Foosnark at 1:17 PM on April 26, 2018 [12 favorites]
As a very pale, easily burned, skin-cancer-prone, summer SAD-having, generally sun-hating type: no they're not. I'd live underground if I could.
Trees reduce reliance on air conditioning by a lot. We had to cut down a big one in our back yard that was old and threatening to crush us or our neighbors, and we can see the difference it made on our electric bills in the summer.
posted by Foosnark at 1:17 PM on April 26, 2018 [12 favorites]
I'm pro-tree, and I think a lot of cities would be pleasanter with more of them. In parts of the Garden District in New Orleans, trees and mosses get so overgrown that you can barely see stop signs. That's not great! But also, it's a residential section of a city. Slow down, or get to an arterial road.
99% invisible did an interesting episode on palm trees. A fully-grown palm tree is worth enough that people actually form crews to steal and re-sell them. It sounded like the thieves were more likely to hit less affluent areas -- perhaps the thieves were less worried about being caught or questioned.
posted by grandiloquiet at 1:26 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
99% invisible did an interesting episode on palm trees. A fully-grown palm tree is worth enough that people actually form crews to steal and re-sell them. It sounded like the thieves were more likely to hit less affluent areas -- perhaps the thieves were less worried about being caught or questioned.
posted by grandiloquiet at 1:26 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
That's interesting about the male trees. Now I have learned the terms "dioecious" and "monoecious". I wonder if the amazing/horrifying amount of pollen in NC compared to similarly green areas in, say, OH has anything to do with the proportion of pollen-producing individual trees.
posted by inconstant at 2:24 PM on April 26, 2018
posted by inconstant at 2:24 PM on April 26, 2018
The leaves would be a pain to rake. The shade would draw drug dealers. And, she feared, soon would follow affluent gentrifiers and higher taxes, pushing out older residents like herself.
These are real concerns and yes, I thank you for pointing out the flip side. At the same time, what I see is still a society with problems it doesn't care to fix. The issue of drug dealers being sheltered by the shade of trees isn't a tree problem, it's a drug-dealer problem. The lack of raking isn't a raking problem, it's a lack-of-city-maintenance problem (in my well-heeled downtown, the municipal utility cleans gutters and rakes public areas). The pollen is a problem, but would allergies be so bad if air quality was less of a problem?
On the whole I think what's happening is that people like the woman who spoke on this are perhaps forced to settle for no greenery, focusing on the one small element that seems controllable in a situation in which the city/state/society has already abandoned the neighborhood. If there weren't a drug problem or a lack of services or adequate public health conditions, the trees would not be seen as the source of a problem. They're not the source of a problem, in and of themselves. If they're problematic it's generally because of their intersection with other, much more intractable problems.
The harder part, of course, is the fact that as soon as a place becomes nice, it becomes a place of choice rather than necessity, and people with more resources want to move in, and original residents lose control. For that I have no better solution than anyone else who works on issues of inequality and gentrification.
posted by Miko at 5:41 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
These are real concerns and yes, I thank you for pointing out the flip side. At the same time, what I see is still a society with problems it doesn't care to fix. The issue of drug dealers being sheltered by the shade of trees isn't a tree problem, it's a drug-dealer problem. The lack of raking isn't a raking problem, it's a lack-of-city-maintenance problem (in my well-heeled downtown, the municipal utility cleans gutters and rakes public areas). The pollen is a problem, but would allergies be so bad if air quality was less of a problem?
On the whole I think what's happening is that people like the woman who spoke on this are perhaps forced to settle for no greenery, focusing on the one small element that seems controllable in a situation in which the city/state/society has already abandoned the neighborhood. If there weren't a drug problem or a lack of services or adequate public health conditions, the trees would not be seen as the source of a problem. They're not the source of a problem, in and of themselves. If they're problematic it's generally because of their intersection with other, much more intractable problems.
The harder part, of course, is the fact that as soon as a place becomes nice, it becomes a place of choice rather than necessity, and people with more resources want to move in, and original residents lose control. For that I have no better solution than anyone else who works on issues of inequality and gentrification.
posted by Miko at 5:41 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
This is literally used as a code in London
See for example "Leafy West London"
Leafy West London means the places where the white people live. Chiswick, Ealing, Kew.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:04 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
See for example "Leafy West London"
Leafy West London means the places where the white people live. Chiswick, Ealing, Kew.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 4:04 AM on April 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
(continuing to think about my previous comment)
In a sense, the presence of trees in itself acts as a sign that the other social ills have been mitigated. That may be at least in part the reason that "leafy" neighborhoods signal themselves as safe/ready for/appealing to gentrifiers.
posted by Miko at 7:51 AM on April 27, 2018
In a sense, the presence of trees in itself acts as a sign that the other social ills have been mitigated. That may be at least in part the reason that "leafy" neighborhoods signal themselves as safe/ready for/appealing to gentrifiers.
posted by Miko at 7:51 AM on April 27, 2018
I've always found this Guy Clark - LA Freeway inspiration to be the pretty much perfect descriptor between people who like trees and people who think they are at best a necessary nuisance. It's the story behind a country song from the '70s called LA Freeway. The story starts at about 4:20 in if you don't like the song - but it's about a Guy who lives in LA and the landlord cuts down his grapefruit tree because it is starting to cause problems with some concrete.
It's understandable from either viewpoint - trees do damage, they require maintenance, but they also make life better if you can afford them. I agree with everyone else- the points the woman are raising are real and indicative of a local government that is not interested in maintaining their assets at the same level in every community. Trees are just more noticeable than pipes or a friendly police presence.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:58 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's understandable from either viewpoint - trees do damage, they require maintenance, but they also make life better if you can afford them. I agree with everyone else- the points the woman are raising are real and indicative of a local government that is not interested in maintaining their assets at the same level in every community. Trees are just more noticeable than pipes or a friendly police presence.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:58 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
Not directly related, but the Lost Decade here in Tory Austeritrexit Britain* has seen local governments' funding cut and cut and cut again, resulting in the selling off** of public toilets to save money on maintenance plus the removal of public benches to save money on maintenance plus the removal of trees and bushes to save money on maintenance. My town looks and feels worse for it. I'm someone who unironically loves a bit of concrete Brutalism yet still the flat, treeless, bushless, pissless greyscape makes me want to bite*** someone and not stop till one of us dies, so I definitely agree with the article's underlying premise.
Local environment matters. The end of green matters. People deserve to breathe fresh air and live in a place which isn't architected against them.
*where the working and middle classes for ten years have had to do their bit, knuckle down and restore international banking's profits after that credit crunch shitshow which was caused by one single thoughtless single mother buying branded Jaffa cakes and not the EuroShopper ones
**to whom we don't ask but I'm sure they deserve the bargains by merit of their birth
***wait, did I say "bite"? I meant "vote against for the rest of my natural life"
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 9:45 PM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
Local environment matters. The end of green matters. People deserve to breathe fresh air and live in a place which isn't architected against them.
*where the working and middle classes for ten years have had to do their bit, knuckle down and restore international banking's profits after that credit crunch shitshow which was caused by one single thoughtless single mother buying branded Jaffa cakes and not the EuroShopper ones
**to whom we don't ask but I'm sure they deserve the bargains by merit of their birth
***wait, did I say "bite"? I meant "vote against for the rest of my natural life"
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 9:45 PM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]
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posted by Miko at 10:39 AM on April 26, 2018 [39 favorites]