
New York City mapped its trees and calculated each one’s economic benefits - Audiophilip
http://www.archdaily.com/800157/new-york-city-mapped-all-of-its-trees-and-calculated-the-economic-benefits-of-every-single-one
======
soVeryTired
I'm not sure I understand what it means to measure the "economic value of a
tree". Yes, trees provide shade and reduce pollution, but does that really
mean one can meaningfully attach a dollar value to a tree?

There are two statements that I think are meaningful: "this tree costs $X to
plant and maintain", and "This tree provides benefits that would otherwise
cost $X". But if you want to make the latter statement, are you _really_ sure
you've captured all the benefits? Including aesthetic ones? Because I'm not
really convinced that's possible.

~~~
sampo
Urban vegetation:

1\. Has high reflectance in the infrared, so they reflect sunlight back to the
sky before it is converted to heat. Built surfaces would absorb this radiation
and heat up.

2\. Reduce heat also by evaporating water.

3\. Reduce ground level heat by providing shadow.

4\. Remove pollution from air, such as sulfur oxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides
(NOx), ozone (O3) and fine particles.

But yes, converting these to money is very indirect and involves a lot
estimation.

~~~
mememachine
Whats the contribution of 1. to climate change? Insignificant?

~~~
ajkjk
The contribution of trees and albedo in general to climate change is huge. But
I doubt that urban trees, specifically, contribute a significant effect. They
do greatly contribute to avoiding the also-problematic urban heat-island
effect, though.

------
cornedor
This is also getting available for the complete Netherlands (also information
like benches, trash bin's, drainage etc) on
[http://pdokviewer.pdok.nl/](http://pdokviewer.pdok.nl/)

A screenshot of some of this data:
[http://imgur.com/Pgvzfnf](http://imgur.com/Pgvzfnf)

~~~
cornedor
I just found out that boomregister.nl actually has even more data. It has
literaly almost every tree in the country. Even tree's in forests and private
tree's

More screenshots: [http://imgur.com/a/ctLGx](http://imgur.com/a/ctLGx)

------
Libbum
Melbourne has been doing a similar thing for some time now:
[http://melbourneurbanforestvisual.com.au/](http://melbourneurbanforestvisual.com.au/)

~~~
cylinder
Always loved the presence of trees in the CBD.

~~~
bootload
_" loved the presence of trees in the CBD."_

As a kid coming from semi-rural area going to Uni, for months I'd trek from
RMIT to the closest gardens to eat lunch under a canopy of trees at the
Exhibition gardens. [0]

Melbourne's northern clime trees and some native vegetation is at risk of
premature death. [1] Something like 20% or 375 different species. Lot of
planning going into inner-city deforestation.

[0] Like this
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_Elm_avenue.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:English_Elm_avenue.jpg)

[1] Birdie Smith, _" Tree change for Melbourne, as the city plans for a warmer
world"_ [http://www.smh.com.au/environment/tree-change-for-
melbourne-...](http://www.smh.com.au/environment/tree-change-for-melbourne-as-
the-city-plans-for-a-warmer-world-20161115-gsq9zd.html) 2016 Nov 17.

------
allworknoplay
I think they have some data integrity problems: [https://tree-
map.nycgovparks.org/#treeinfo-3752098](https://tree-
map.nycgovparks.org/#treeinfo-3752098) Trunk Diameter: 424 inches

Riiiiight...

~~~
jrockway
I feel like... from some spot checking, these are all circumferences, not
diameters.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
That'd still be an 11 foot dia. trunk.

~~~
jrockway
Not saying that some data points aren't also simply wrong. But many more
become plausible if you divide them by pi ;)

------
rmah
Just to clarify, it's not all of NYC trees. The map doesn't include trees in
parks or on private land. It is only sidewalk trees. Still a wonderful
project.

~~~
bpicolo
Yep! You can see that here: [https://tree-
map.nycgovparks.org/#treeinfo-3758005](https://tree-
map.nycgovparks.org/#treeinfo-3758005)

Trees in background not catalogued

------
jonlucc
Indianapolis has a group called Keep Indianapolis Beautiful (KIB) that works
to beautify the city and help decrease long term maintenance costs to the
city. To that end, every year they plant thousands of trees, often removing
entire plots of land from the maintenance rotation because trees don't require
mowing. They have a database that tracks source nurseries, species, locations,
etcetera that I'm sure would be a delight to dig through.

------
tzakrajs
Washington DC did this
[http://dcgis.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=...](http://dcgis.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=fea6079cf9bc4310a8b6c94f8c2bf1da)

------
djaychela
What a fantastic site this and the others people have posted on here are.
Making this kind of information available to people is a great way to change
their opinion of something that otherwise they probably think doesn't do
anything for them, or that has a cost, not a benefit to the local economy and
environment, and is the kind of information we need to give our kids access to
so it becomes de rigeur to understand how important trees are. With all the
bad news in the world at the moment, this has been a ray of sunshine, thanks.

------
sorincos
Zürich has it too [https://www.stadt-
zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/gsz/planung_u_bau/...](https://www.stadt-
zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/gsz/planung_u_bau/inventare_und_grundlagen/baumkataster.html)

------
maelito
Paris :

\- street trees ("alignement")

[https://opendata.paris.fr/explore/dataset/arbresalignementpa...](https://opendata.paris.fr/explore/dataset/arbresalignementparis2010/map/?location=18,48.86212,2.36627)

\- park trees

[https://opendata.paris.fr/explore/dataset/les-
arbres/map/?lo...](https://opendata.paris.fr/explore/dataset/les-
arbres/map/?location=19,48.84257,2.38825)

------
Odenwaelder
Frankfurt also did this:
[https://www.frankfurt.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=3051&_ffmpar%5...](https://www.frankfurt.de/sixcms/detail.php?id=3051&_ffmpar%5B_id_inhalt%5D=24228872)

------
michaelmachine
My city Edmonton, Canada also has a map of all the trees they maintain:
[https://data.edmonton.ca/Environmental-Services/Trees-
Specie...](https://data.edmonton.ca/Environmental-Services/Trees-Species-Map-
View-/cggb-hzzm/data)

------
coldcode
Might be interesting to read but a popup blocks the content and the X doesn't
close it.

~~~
nkoren
Try reloading the page? But, yeah, the social media hooks on this
adver^H^H^H^Hsite are _extremely_ aggressive and annoying. It starts with
popup, then if you close that it opens a sidebar, then if you ignore that
opens a footer. All demanding that you like archdaily on Facebook.

------
andyjsong
San Francisco, CA - I helped develop a super basic Android app called Treedat,
we didn't publish on the Play Store since it was just to play around with the
SF dataset and we were just curious what kind of species we were looking at
when we're walking around SF: bit.ly/treedat

------
saycheese
Estimated value of $500 a tree, especially for a large tree, seems off to me,
even if it is the value per year.

~~~
mwexler
Tracing the references, you wind up at
[http://www.itreetools.org/](http://www.itreetools.org/) which describes the
approach the Forestry service took to model out the value of a tree, with some
detail at
[http://www.itreetools.org/resources/archives.php](http://www.itreetools.org/resources/archives.php)

------
adrianN
Is this already imported into OSM?

~~~
maxerickson
Probably not, it is not in the NYC data portal (a 1995 tree census is). Edit:
Oops, that's wrong, it's here
[https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Environment/2015-Street-
Tree-C...](https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Environment/2015-Street-Tree-Census-
Tree-Data/pi5s-9p35) )

It's anyway kind of pointless to jam such data into OSM. Most rendering tools
are happy to use multiple data sources, so someone interested in such
specialized information can just get it from New York City.

That doesn't mean that it absolutely shouldn't be added to OSM, but there
should be some clear motivations and benefits, not just helping (hypothetical)
lazy people (that might be interested in the data) avoid a JOIN (which is
hyperbole, for this data you don't even have to match anything up, just use it
together with a base map).

~~~
krzyk
Well, but how many joins would you need to show all those data in multiple
countries?

There are a lot of trees added to OSM in European countries for example, not
everyone needs to know that e.g. Berlin has tree data in this DB and Frankfurt
in another one.

~~~
maxerickson
That's what I meant by hypothetical though. How many people are scrambling to
build global tree viewers that would only include the sparse data you would
get by importing all the publicly available data sets?

The interest in such data is going to tend to be local or be forced to take
into account the nature of the data collection (and thus benefit from directly
accessing the curated source data). An example of the latter would be an
academic analysis; to pull data from OSM, it would need to start by
determining geographic areas with good coverage, or the results would be
utterly meaningless.

~~~
adrianN
I like to think of OSM as striving be as complete and as accurate as possible.
So I believe every correct piece of data should be added.

~~~
maxerickson
Sure, but a hasty import of large amounts of data that no one is around to
maintain it is at odds with accuracy.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Which is why we should be encouraging government agencies to use OSM as the
canonical reference.

~~~
maxerickson
It's probably going to take more than encouragement.

Namely, changes to open records laws to make it okay to work on data sets that
are not strictly public domain.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Is not all map data in the US not in the public domain, being works by the
government?

~~~
maxerickson
The point is that a public employee subject to open records laws can't edit
OSM because OSM isn't public domain.

Here's an example. The National Park Service can't treat OSM as their
canonical data store:

[https://www.nps.gov/npmap/blog/nps-plus-osm-equals-places-
of...](https://www.nps.gov/npmap/blog/nps-plus-osm-equals-places-of-
interest.html)

People play blame-the-ODBL, but there's not really any epically strong
arguments against adjusting the public records laws to be a little more
flexible.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Thank you for sharing this!

------
wodenokoto
Is there a way to search ones own comments? I was in a discussion about the
yearly price of urban trees a while back on HN, and I thought the numbers
would be relevant to this story, but I can't find an easy way to dig up the
post.

~~~
oskarth
This one?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12054786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12054786)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:wodenokoto%20tree&sort=byPo...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:wodenokoto%20tree&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

------
kutkloon7
Attempts to compute the economic benefits of objects that are not economic are
usually meaningless exercises for the bored mind.

~~~
maxerickson
The idea that there are objects that are not economic is nonsense.

Even things with direct utility like food have weird economic values, not
objective values tied only to their utility.

------
bairrd
Why are we means-testing trees? This is ridiculous.

------
FrancoDiaz
Trees are nice, but holy cow...people with too much time and money on their
hands making stuff up to justify whatever.

~~~
earlyriser
What are they making up to justify what?

~~~
Raphmedia
My guess:

Got X budget this year. Used 1/2 of X budget for useful things.

Requirement: Use all of X budget or receive only 1/2 of X budget next year.

Solution: Use the budget to map all the trees.

------
guimarin
so, is there a consulting question in here somewhere... If there are X trees
in NYC/SF, and each tree can stay alive if only peed on by 100 dogs per week,
how many dogs are in those cities?

------
Kristine1975
Because clearly the only thing important when it comes to trees is their
economic value/s

Still a nice project.

~~~
Ma8ee
No one claimed that their economic value is the only thing important.

------
mangeletti
Do you think it's strange that cities need to map nature to prove its economic
value?

I've never understood the appeal of cities (other than a quick 1-2 day visit).

Cities are more inefficient[1], have more pollution[2], have less nature[3],
stink like shit[4], have less happiness[5], have more noise[6], require
subways and mass transit just to get around, are more expensive[7], etc. (the
list almost doesn't end).

1\.
[https://www.hks.harvard.edu/content/download/70101/1253214/v...](https://www.hks.harvard.edu/content/download/70101/1253214/version/1/file/inefficientcities_final.pdf)

2\.
[http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20490855,00.html](http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20490855,00.html)

3\. I don't think I need a citation for this one

4\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-new-york-city-smells-
in-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-new-york-city-smells-in-the-
summer-2016-6)

5\. [http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/06/the-price-of-
happines...](http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/06/the-price-of-happiness-in-
cities/487823/)

6\. [http://earthjournalism.net/resources/noise-pollution-
managin...](http://earthjournalism.net/resources/noise-pollution-managing-the-
challenge-of-urban-sounds)

7\. [http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/expenditures-of-
urban-a...](http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/expenditures-of-urban-and-
rural-households-in-2011.htm)

~~~
vidarh
> Cities are more inefficient[1]

That's not what your source says at all.

What it says is that there is a point where further increases in density will
provide less positive economic effects than negative. It does not say what
that point is, nor does it say that there aren't means that can move the
interesection point further up. The point where a city becomes less efficient
than a rural area is also much further up the density scale, because to get
there you first need the inefficiencies to outweight all the benefits, not
merely rise faster than the benefits.

The paper doesn't even _try_ to quantify which cities might have reached or
exceeded the threshold where further density would be detrimental. All it does
is try to establish office rents as an indicator of the efficiency of land use
policies.

The paper itself also points out a lot of caveats even for their very limited
goals.

