I have always been very curious as to why many cities do not push for more forests to cool down the place. I studied in a college with a lot of trees on campus and the temperature was at least 5 C cooler than just outside the college.
In Britain I've seen trees planted in urban spaces. And then local residents come
and pour rock-salt and weed-killer on the saplings there - because it stops them parking.
> in Sheffield there was a huge movement from residents to stop the cutting down of trees
I cynically searched as I was sure the trees would all have been cut down.
They weren’t. There were wrongful arrest payouts, more trees planted and everyone started working together to plant more trees. Is this really correct?
I think about doing this. Just guerilla tree planting. Harvest
saplings from where they're obviously not going to thrive, grab a
foldable entrencher and just hit spots that need a bit of
reforestation. However I suspect most of them wouldn't take and that
there's a bit more to successful tree planting than I suppose.
As city dweller, I really would like less parking in my city.
Turns out surface parking is a better $/sqft than garages once you count maintenance. This means that the core part of the city where density is greatest is ringed by a 2-5 block wide wasteland of surface lots. Its not great. Especially now that work from home is a thing and the divide between people who live here and people who drive here to work is obvious because the suburb people aren't here any more but their parking spaces still are
The parking spaces are still there because the city's 'density' or 'daytime population' was pumped by ecologically unsustainable commutes.
The US has never had a high level civic planning process or ability. Housing ends up built where-ever, and it's often cheapest to go built it in places with less regulation. Like wild frontiers in not even states. Or in areas outside of city limits as a tax dodge. There also aren't formal processes for renewing areas; instead informally they're allowed to decay and crime rise, and eventually reach a point where it becomes 'economically viable' for building something new.
Those lots exist because there's still enough whatever is desired in the city you live in, probably too much retail and office space. Probably not enough apartment / condo / housing space, but none of those investors want to admit their market was over-valued and de-value the present investments so they'll happily keep supply low and rents high.
Parking spaces by definition benefit people who drive, which usually means someone well out of walking distance. That leads to some interesting dynamics where people who are enough richer to have nice separated homes use their social status to demand parking everywhere even though the main thing people near those spaces get out of it is negative health impacts.
One interesting angle involves small businesses: you’ll often see owners interviewed complaining about losing parking spaces. This makes no sense for a local business, and there are decades of studies showing that pedestrian/transit/bike traffic generates more revenue for small businesses (if you’re already in the car, you’re probably continuing to a big store) but it makes total sense when you realize that the owners are far more likely to live out in the suburbs and are making the mistake of assuming this is also true of their customers. There’s a staple in some city planning debates of noting that the people complaining loudest about how their customers won’t stop if they can’t park right in front are often leaving their own cars in those spaces all day.
> pedestrian/transit/bike traffic generates more revenue for small businesses
Sure, if you have a walkable/transitable/bikeable city. If you don't, then losing parking spaces can be an issue.
I would have to walk for 24 Google Maps minutes to get to the nearest store of any kind. And I'm close; people farther down the main road that feeds my street could face almost an hour's walk each way (with no sidewalks or shoulders; you're walking in a ditch) to get to the same place. Several large hills along that route and a hot, muggy climate means that nobody is going to bike it.
My niece, from Colorado, came to visit her grandfather (my dad). She wanted to go for a hike in the South in July. I said sure, I'll take you. Five minutes into it, she said, "Now I know why everyone is fat here. This is miserable." And my reply was "Yes, and this isn't as hot or as humid as it gets. It's actually not that bad today."
> Sure, if you have a walkable/transitable/bikeable city. If you don't, then losing parking spaces can be an issue.
But a huge part of what makes cities terrible for walking/biking/transit is having too much parking.
Shop entrances being right next to the sidewalk is ENORMOUSLY more pleasant for pedestrians compared to needing to walk across a veritable sea of asphalt, as is the case in typical American strip malls and similar developments.
> I would have to walk for 24 Google Maps minutes to get to the nearest store of any kind.
Probably a zoning/density issue. We've intentionally designed our cities to be shit for walking and to our credit we've succeeded enormously.
> Five minutes into it, she said, "Now I know why everyone is fat here. This is miserable." And my reply was "Yes, and this isn't as hot or as humid as it gets. It's actually not that bad today."
Nope, that's not it at all. The American South has a somewhat similar climate to Japan, and even the warmer parts of Japan have way skinnier people.
I lived in Alabama for a couple years, and I'd say it's mostly just transportation design and culture around eating. I biked a bunch in Alabama and it was fucking terrible. That shit sucked. Granted, biking almost anywhere in the US is pretty bad, but Alabama was definitely worse than some of the other places I lived, and infrastructure was the biggest part of that.
We’re talking in the context of cities so I was only referring to more dense scenarios. I agree that rural or really low-density suburban communities are different.
The key point is really just the function of distance: people who live near a small shop will go there due to convenience. If it’s far enough to need a car, they’ll probably keep going to a bigger shop with lower prices because the cost of having and using the car is already incurred and the cost of doing anything else is greater.
Street parking in a lot of cities in america is notoriously "free". I think somebody wrote an article about how in SF, their car pays less rent per sqft than they do.
They often get most of that with a garage. No sewage is needed, though runoff from parking should really be treated before being dumped into waterways.
People who live there profit from the trees through quality of life benefits (such as being 5 degrees cooler). Maybe part of the problem is that a lot of landowners tend to not live in the land they own, so they can't see these profits.
Most land that isn’t already a park is privately owned. Most cities can’t afford to buy out a forests worth of real estate let alone clear it and replant it.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have trees: a high-rise building next to a park is quite dense, as are tree-lined streets.
The problem is those streets: the 20th century model focused on maximizing individual vehicle usage, which meant lots of open space for safe operation and subsidized storage. Cars can’t go around trees like pedestrians or bicyclists and owners don’t want branches falling on their parked cars, so anywhere there isn’t enough space for both it tended to result in more heat-amplifying asphalt.
