[HN Gopher] 'In cities, trees are treated like street furniture'
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       'In cities, trees are treated like street furniture'
        
       Author : PaulHoule
       Score  : 11 points
       Date   : 2024-11-17 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (english.elpais.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (english.elpais.com)
        
       | blackeyeblitzar wrote:
       | > He's less enthusiastic about the presence of trees in cities.
       | "They're treated a bit like street furniture," he laments. "The
       | ecosystem is fragile. The city itself is very stressful for them.
       | It's hot and illuminated at night, when the trees also need to
       | sleep. The ideal would be to create small ecosystems, as was done
       | in Medellin in 2019, [when] more than 800,000 trees were planted.
       | [The authorities] created a green corridor that allowed summer
       | temperatures to drop by two to three degrees [Celsius]."
       | 
       | Trees are so essential to mental wellbeing. It's sad to see
       | cities turn previously green spaces into dull concrete land. Some
       | of it may be, like this quote suggests, the particular approach
       | used to tree and park management. But it also comes down to
       | corruption and politics. In Seattle, long standing tree
       | protection schemes and environmental codes are not bring enforced
       | against developers building new housing, even though they are on
       | the books and supposed to be applied equally to everyone.
       | Builders of course are deeply involved in supporting local
       | politicians. Meanwhile, the green canopy of tall older trees that
       | defined the city is eroding every year, and what attracts people
       | to this area is going away, in part due to the demands of the
       | same people (for cheaper housing to enable them). I don't know
       | what the solution is, except for maybe big public works projects
       | to replenish green spaces AND protect older growth across several
       | decades. But that is what existing law (city codes) was supposed
       | to do.
        
         | metalman wrote:
         | In Pakistan and India,plus other places, where once heavily
         | treed citys are now striped bare. There are truely apocoliptic
         | smog events happening now. The politicians hide untill there is
         | a windy day, and take credit for having used the military to do
         | "cloud seeding" and having caused rain somewhere else that it
         | succeded in clearing the air. It is so bad there now, that
         | speculating about, at which point does the incredable soot load
         | in the air, actualy become flamable itself, as in
         | fires/exposions in flour mills and saw mills, from the dust
         | reaching the critical air/fuel ratio for combustion. bad bad
         | budaboom
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-17 23:01 UTC)