From Madrid to Berlin and Paris to Budapest, scientists and planners agree, trees, trees and yet more trees can help make Europe’s cities more comfortable – even survivable – over the coming years, as global heating strengthens its grip.
But concrete pavements, high-rise buildings, historical squares and underground car parks are a hostile environment for trees, and authorities are finding it hard to plant more. In fact, many EU cities are less green than they were a century ago.
“It’s a massive challenge,” said Christophe Najdovski, the deputy mayor for revegetation and green spaces on Paris city council. “We know with enough trees we can lower the city’s summer temperature by up to 8C. They’re basically natural air-conditioning. But planting them isn’t always easy.”
So, house people in a verdant suburbia where all have gardens. The trees will naturally arrive as if by magic.
And what is today’s insistence about urban planning? That none may have gardens because suburbia.
Fuck ’em
LA suffers fropm photochemical smog.
“It’s all the fault of the cars” they said, so expensively cleaned up the exhausts with catalytic converters etc.
Now, the air in the exhaust is cleaner than that going into the air intake.
The smog remains.
Turns out it’s caused by all the trees. The climate favours gum trees and similar, which produce volatile oils. To clean up the air, they need to cut down all the trees!
Actually, we used to have tree-based towns. Garden cities etc. But as you say, no longer allowed under planning rules.
Let’s hope the public sector strikes itself into non-existence.
In fact, many EU cities are less green than they were a century ago.
African and Asian cities aren’t known for being eco-friendly.
With trees come roots. Roots suck up water and dry out the ground causing subsidence. Roots undermine and damage the foundations of roads, pavements and buildings. Roots break drainage and sewage pipes and block them. Roots interfere with underground electricity cables and gas and water pipes.
Trees shed leaves which form slimy, slippery, hazardous deposits on roads and pavements, block gulleys, drains, gutters, requiring costly removal during Autumn. Falling condensed moisture or collected during rainfall from branches plus shade from sunlight causes hazardous frozen patches in Winter.
Apart from that, trees in urban areas are a great idea.
‘… yet more trees can help make Europe’s cities more comfortable – even survivable – over the coming years, as global heating strengthens its grip.’
The evidence for this is what? And… ‘ global heating strengthens’ is just another lie as there has been global cooling for the past 15 years.
If they really believe planting trees can drop the city temperature by 8C then are they admitting the urban heat island effect is real? Because if so an awful lot of temp records supporting global warming are distorted bullshit.
John B “It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”
-Thomas Sowell
Ltw
I seem to remember the urban heat island effect was used to ‘adjust’ the old records of Australian temperatures. This made the awful effect of global warming quite evident once those old temperatures were lowered to what they had to have been.
F’king trees.
My dickhead of a neighbour has 3 Silver Birch trees in his quite small back garden. At 30 feet tall they aren’t even half grown. They’re already casting long shadows over my garden in summer and come autumn I get two tons of leaves deposited onto my garden.
The leaf problem was partly alleviated by me collecting them up and throwing them back over the fence late one night.
But the trees will keep growing.
The same dickhead neighbour planted bamboo next to the fence with no barrier at root level to stop it invading my garden, which it does every year.
Copper nails
Weedkiller along your side of the fence is ineffective?
Bloke in Wales:
Copper nails work, apparently, but it’s a bit obvious. There’s also ring-barking or “girdling”. It can be blamed on deer/badgers/okapi/what have you.
jgh may be along later to talk about Sheffield, which has had greater problems with trees than any of Britain’s other major cities.
Indeed. Sheffield’s main tree problem is that the council forget that trees are vegetation, and vegetation needs to be maintained on a cycle. Cut down 5% this year and replant. Cut down 5% next year and replant. Keep going on a 50-year-ish cycle. Instead we’ve had 30+ years of no tree maintaince, so getting on for 80%+ need to be removed all in one go, loads of them destroying roads and pavements, and huge protests from people seeing their local area devestated. When I was a councillor 20 years ago it took me over a year to get one tree replaced, more recently this one took five years to be replaced. I kept driving past it expecting it to have falled over, taking the road and part of the house with it.
We have a couple of silver birches planted long ago by God knows whom. The council has put a tree preservation order on them which means I have no legitimate way of destroying them. One we don’t mind though whoever eventually buys our house might prefer more parking instead, and cleaner gutters.
The other has roots that have penetrated our drain to the sewer which means that every few years we have to get a chap round to splash about in the filth to cut out bits of root. We would prefer to fell that one.
We also have a couple of resurgent elms, growing back after disappearing for years because of Cloggie Elm Disease. I’d like to get rid of those now before they get “protected” too.
Dearieme, you needed worry about protection orders on elms because once the trunk/stem reaches a certain diameter the disease attacks and the tree dies back although the roots survive to start the process again. Funnily enough they actually work quite well as a hedging plant because they never achieve that critical size.
Thank you, TMB. You’ve cheered me up.
I used to work with a chap that work for a certain well known chocolate manufacturer in the midlands – this was back when computers were room sized things that ran one job, then had the next one loaded from punched tape, and had a whole team to look after them and act as the go-between between users’ requests and getting results out.
He delighted in explaining how Bourneville (the “new” town) was built with a set of generous rules which specified the minimum size of each “grade” of house, minimum garden sizes, and also the number of and type of trees and bushes that had to be in each garden. So instead of rows of back to back terraces like most rapidly expanding towns, they had a lot of greenery to promote wellbeing long before it was a management buzzword.
But back to the article …
“And what is today’s insistence about urban planning? That none may have gardens because suburbia.”
AFAIK planning does not prohibit gardens – in fact I suspect that guidance is for gardens. I suspect the problem, as previously pointed out by TW, is the existence of the T&CPA of 1948 which has created artificial scarcity and pushed up the price of land to the point where people can’t afford houses built on plots big enough to have a garden (of any size). Such houses do exist, but they are priced such that you have to be fairly well up the wealth ladder to be able to afford one. Luckily for us, a number of circumstances came together and we were able to buy an ex-council house built in the 1940s and with a very generous garden – back then, the policy for social housing was for very generous gardens to give working people the green spaces that they otherwise would not have had access to (either at all, or easily). They also had generously sized rooms. These days I reckon some tight-a**ed developer would manage to fit at least 8 shoeboxes on the same sized plot !
And a few years ago I commented to a friend that it was possible to (roughly) date his property from the size of the garden – you’d not get that on any modern development. He was “sceptical”. A few weeks later, after having had a wander around the newer parts of the same area (with their postcard sized gardens), he responded “oh, I see what you mean”.