Upper Green Side

Help Us Find Homes for Trees

Posted by Glenn April 19, 2007 at 8:01 pm in News |

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How can you place a price on something as beautiful and majestic as a tree in the midst of our urban environment? “Priceless” many would say about the trees out their doors and windows that have been constant companions over the years.

The Parks Department has a more precise answer as reported in the NY Times:

$122 million in annual benefits from the 592,130 of NYC’s street trees from higher real estate values to lower Summer cooling costs and of course the carbon that they sequester from the atmosphere. That’s over $200k per tree.

Another way that the Parks Department has calculated the value to the city is the Return On Investment of tree planting and maintance on city streets. The ROI is $5.60 per dollar spent on street trees.

With this staggering value per tree and ROI, Upper Green Side is stepping up it’s efforts to find empty tree beds - plots where trees could easily be planted immediately on city streets without cutting through concrete. Walking around the Upper East Side the other day I personally found 10 empty tree beds:
1. North side of CPS: Across from 40 West 59th Street
2. Northside of CPS: Across from 42 West 59th Street
3. 1160 Third Ave (West side of street between 67th and 68th)
4. 1164 Third Ave (West side of street between 67th and 68th) - large stump
5 & 6. 1202 3rd Avenue (West Side of street between 69th and 70th)
7 1282 Third Avenue (between 73rd and 74th Third Ave.
8.170 East 79th Street
9. South East corner of 81st and Lexington
10. South West corner of 80th and Lexington

We will work with local elected officials and the Parks Department to get these plots filled, but we need to find as many of these as possible.

Please send us any that you find to glenn uppergreenside com or leave a note in the comments section below.

Photo by Susan NYC

8 Comments »

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1. I don’t have any plots to inform but would like to add (question), what is the regulation for cutting sidewalks to plant trees? (or is it essentially impossible)

   I felt quite embarrassed, recently traveled to Odessa, Ukraine (gdp per person of less than $2000 per year) and the city looked very nice, in a large part due to tree lined sidewalks.

   I noted there, the concrete has been laid to allow for tree planting (holes in the sidewalks) -they’ve been there for over 100 years however.

   Comment by Randy Kirk — April 20, 2007 #

2. […] in the sidewalk, drop a note to our neighborhood green advocacy group, Upper Green Side which is collecting a list of places that need trees. And keep an eye on their site in general, because Upper Green Side is providing direction and […]

   Pingback by » Blog Archive » Filling empty sidewalks with trees — May 7, 2007 #

3. We recently lost a tree on 96th St between Park and Madison (north side of the street). It was dead, and it was removed by the city. Now there are two tree pits next to each other without a tree–both are near a M96 crosstown bus stop. More trees in that area would provide shade for people waiting for the bus. Subscribing to the idea that green spaces are natural traffic calmers, the trees might make cars slow down as they speed to catch the light on their way across town.

   Comment by Kelley — August 13, 2007 #

4. Like you have pointed out trees are asthetically pleasing and lead to higher property prices in the neighbourhood. Also stop people looking directly in on you not to mention greenshouse gasses so you would have thought it easy to motivate people to plant more trees.

   Comment by David — January 27, 2008 #

5. I have always wondered why more cities do not adopt the planting of trees on side walks. It’s actually very beautiful instead of all those ugly parking meters and bins we see all day.
   I was in europe and the streets were just wonderful. Maybe people needed to see your numbers to understand it can also be profitable.

   Comment by tony rich — February 7, 2008 #

6. Green is always going to look better than grey .Give me a football pitch anyday over a tarmac square

   Comment by free live footy — February 20, 2008 #

7. yes! more trees the better!

   Comment by lrembo91 — March 25, 2008 #

8. It is so beauty when you see tree in urban environment. Plant trees - make our world clean.

   Comment by Download quality Movies — April 29, 2008 #

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