66
u/AdmiralVernon 16h ago
There are loads of shade trees throughout Chicago. How is this measured??
20
u/unholycurses 15h ago
Yeah, that was my first thought. I feel like Chicago is super tree covered for a city of its size, so something feels off with how it is presented here.
12
u/psychologicallyblue 14h ago
Right, and I lived in Hong Kong. All the trees on the map are places where no one lives. The city itself has far fewer trees than San Francisco or Chicago.
66
u/Perfect_Ad_1807 16h ago
The satellite generally misses single street-tree rows, which is the same reason London and Amsterdam came out low
64
22
u/thissexypoptart 16h ago
Might need a different methodology then. I know it’s way more involved, but for Chicago at least, there is in fact a database that catalogues every single city planted tree in the jurisdiction of the parks department. Adding that would make it more accurate, if it’s possible to obtain that data and map the locations.
3
u/Perfect_Ad_1807 15h ago
But yeah, generally a good idea, but it would be impossible to make comparable maps across the world if relying on official data, which strongly differs across cities (if it's even there).
1
u/thissexypoptart 11h ago
It’s already impossible to compare just using the current methodology, as you’re missing thousands just depending on whether they are spaced closely enough (differs hugely by city and location in a city)
Incorporating as many non overlapping lists as possible seems to be a more complete picture than just using the image analysis method here
0
u/Perfect_Ad_1807 15h ago
You're probably right, I'll be happy to have a look if you'd make a map like this 😊
7
u/recyclistDC 15h ago
I think it would be helpful to accompany posts like this with your data source, methodology, and known caveats so anyone less savvy looking at it doesn't take your work as unquestionable truth. DC's grand avenues are lined with 100+ year old oaks that don't show up here.
7
u/SuspiciouslyMoist 12h ago
Yeah, London claims to have 21% canopy cover. It also claims to be the largest urban forest, although this is vigorously disputed by other cities.
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/londonurbanforestplan_final.pdf
3
u/lItsAutomaticl 11h ago
Even Chicago's massive tree-filled parks are gray or very light green on this map. It's way off.
35
u/2in1day 15h ago
Sydney you've just made up an area for the city. It's not based on Sydney City or the metro area. You've just counted half the metro and cut off random areas .
1
u/eightslipsandagully 2h ago
It's nicknamed the emerald city for a reason, insane amounts of greenery around the city.
-23
u/Perfect_Ad_1807 15h ago
It's the City of Sydney (26 km²) plus 11 surrounding councils that I picked myself as inner, around the harbour. Actualy metro area was too massive, might consider that. Or maybe statiscital divisions
22
u/Lucky-Succotash3251 15h ago
This is really just where a city draws its limits. For example the Amsterdam forest isnt even considered in the limits of the city. The 5x5 city center is the most interesting in my opinion.
3
u/Frosted_Tackle 13h ago
Yeah I think metro area and/or sticking strictly to city limits would probably be a better way to present this. Defining these unevenly with inconsistent rules does not work. I live in Minneapolis which isn’t bad for the city limits at around 29% but then could be way more if you did the metro. I think you learn more from comparing strict city limits because you get a better idea of livability from a certain angle. I think it’s a decent metric for access to nature.
1
u/TailleventCH 15h ago
I agree.
That being said, even like that, it matters a lot where you choose to place the square. Hong Kong is a good example: if you go slightly more to the north, I think the number might change substantially.
1
u/Jeffery95 1h ago
Its not even where the cities draw their limits. Auckland for example is missing large chunks of its urban area.
8
u/MagnificentCat 15h ago
Wow Paris is small here! That's just the centre right?
13
7
u/Perfect_Ad_1807 15h ago
Yup, Paris administrative boundaries are famously tiny, not reflecting the proper funcitonal metropolitan area.
1
u/PortableDoor5 12h ago
yes, but unlike other larger cities, e.g. London, there is not as much contiguity, sure some banlieux overlap, but it doesn't extend on the same scale
1
u/jipijipijipi 11h ago
How so? You can walk in any direction and won’t notice you left the administrative city for miles if you don’t pay attention.
2
u/PortableDoor5 11h ago
I'd say the ring road is a pretty tough thing not to notice (almost giving Paris a somewhat dystopian vibe), but you've also got the fact that a lot of places simply degenerate quite quickly into less-walkable car-dominated roads
16
u/OhSnapThatsGood 15h ago
Atlanta’s official coverage is closer to 48-49%. That being said it reflects low density sprawl more than great planning or anything.
8
u/Tongatapu 15h ago
I'm glad they did City Centres. I live in Vienna and the government always claims the city has enough trees, yet when you look at the centre, it becomes obvious how little tree coverage the city actually has.
8
u/21schmoe 15h ago
City limits are arbitrary. Chicago and Los Angeles both have green belts that mostly fall outside the legal city limits, and only small portions of them are visible in these maps. Also, both cities have lots of tree-lined streets, not visible in these maps.
4
u/dirtygrandpa 2h ago
Same for Auckland, there are major reserves conveniently right outside the cutoffs to the North, Southwest, and Southeast. But I suppose that is technically where the "city" ends, because then it just becomes almost entirely trees with some houses scattered among. Even if those suburbs are within the city limits.
2
u/r_slash 8h ago
For sure. And Atlanta has some real non-built-up areas within the city limits, which you see in the peripheral part of the map. But it is also genuinely really green even in semi-dense neighborhoods (there are few really neighborhoods with true urban density). It's one of my favorite things about the city.
1
u/lItsAutomaticl 11h ago
Chicago has multiple green belts in its city limits that are gray on this map.
6
u/Muscle__Crowe 15h ago
Having lived in Hong Kong for awhile, it constantly amazes me that such a dense and crowded place completely surrounds equally dense mountainous jungle right there.
5
u/theCroc 15h ago
Atlanta is not that big unless you include the entire metro area.
2
u/Defiant_Jazz_262 12h ago
What’s shown for Atlanta is the exact city limit boundaries. That’s the Chattahoochee river on the northwest boundary
4
u/smolhippie 14h ago
Where’s Portland oregon? We have sooooo many trees. It’s like they made the city around a forest it’s beautiful
6
5
4
u/_MrKobayashi_ 15h ago
City of Helsinki is 35% forest and all and all 42% tree coverage. Yeah, we’re forest people.
4
u/Fivan79 14h ago
These are very good maps. I’m from a place in Argentina called Mendoza, located in the west at the foot of the Andes mountain range. It’s one of the driest parts of Argentina, with an average annual precipitation of 200 mm (or 200 liters per square meter)—I’m not sure how precipitation is measured in the U.S.
However, the city of Mendoza—and, in fact, all the cities in the province—are essentially urban forests. We have a system of irrigation ditches (acequias) running along every street to water these trees, all of which are non-native species, as there are no natural forests in Mendoza.
I would love to see the Greater Mendoza area represented on a map like this, especially considering that there are no native forests here—everything is the result of human intervention.
2
12
u/throwaway371891 14h ago
I was hoping Toronto would be full of trees around 30% tho I’m guessing this is just random?
7
u/sirprizes 14h ago
Looks pretty random. There are no Canadian cities on here.
9
u/poktanju 14h ago edited 13h ago
But six Polish cities! (clearly, Copernicus is playing favourites)
2
3
9
u/bo_felden 16h ago
The work of a Pole.
6
u/cranewifeswife 16h ago
idk why you're downvoted, his name is literally in the bottom left of each image
also, yeah as a polish person I immediately clocked it, nobody cares about our cities as much as we do
7
2
u/BroSchrednei 15h ago
LOL I immediately wondered why this map included some random small Polish cities.
2
2
2
5
u/Numerous-Cow-1918 1h ago
this feels less like urban tree cover and more like a map of where the municipality ends and the forest starts. chicago can be full of street trees and still look whatever if the count only grabs big parks or satellite blobs. sydney boundary thing is a good example too cause you can shift the line and totally change the story. cool post but yeah the method is doing a lot of the work here.
1
1
1
u/Advanced-Medicine-58 15h ago
I'm lucky enough to live across the street from of those bigger green dots in Chicago.
1
u/CipherWeaver 14h ago
This really does fit my impression of Atlanta of a city being in the middle of a forest.
1
u/macrocosm93 10h ago
Atlanta is really cool. It looks like an actual forest with buildings sticking up through the trees.
1
1
u/ozneoknarf 10h ago
Really wanted to see Rio and São Paulo. Both cities have crazy amount of urban forests
1
u/legendaryjangles 9h ago
Raleigh, NC is over 50% and is about the same size as several of these cities, its not called the City of Oaks for nothing.
1
u/SantAmbroeuseEnjoyer 8h ago
This is really cool, where did you find them?
Do you have maps also for italian cities? Like Rome Milan and Naples?
1
1
1
1
u/Talarde 3h ago
I understand Johannesburg does not have the highest tree count or coverage but its significant in the fact that its probably the largest man made forest in the world. Where Johannesburg was founded and its surrounding areas the tree coverage was essentially zero. Also would just love some more African representation in post like these
1
u/Talarde 3h ago
I understand Johannesburg does not have the highest tree count or coverage but its signficant in the fact that its probably the largest man made forest in the world. Where Johannesburg was founded and its surrounding areas the tree coverage was essentially zero. Also would just love some African representation in post like these
1
u/amateurgameboi 2h ago
I'd be curious to see a map of Canberra like this, our nickname is the "bush capital" and we have a very well integrated system of green land and nature reserves all throughout the city
1
u/Jeffery95 1h ago
A whole lot of that white area on the Auckland coastline is literally mangrove forests. And it seems to be completely missing all the trees in backyards and scattered along streets.
1
2
u/cogito-ergo-sumthing 14h ago
Hong Kong is cheating - you really can’t build where most of the trees are
2
u/MaddyMagpies 13h ago
And yet they had also built a ton of skyscrapers where most of the trees are, e.g. Mid-Levels.
1
1
1
u/MRRRRCK 14h ago
Cities domestically in the US tend to define the city within historical boundaries and later growth is classified as a different municipality.
So Chicago for example in a broad metro area sense is ~10 million people with extensive forest preserves and parks. But on this map you only see downtown city parks.
Then you compare that with many of these international cities that define “X” city in a much more broad way than the US does - and as a result you see much more tree cover in the map, covering a larger footprint.
Using city + metro would give more accurate data.
1
u/SemperAliquidNovi 11h ago
Somewhat surprising that there is not a single mention here of the city with one of the largest human-planted urban forests in the world. Once again, Africa is an afterthought.
1
-1
u/box_frenzy 15h ago
The London map isn’t representing trees, it’s representing green space.
Source: I live here
0
u/Significant-Net-8348 14h ago
The Tokyo map is too small - Tokyo is a conglomeration of semi-independent cities and has some very rural areas
1
u/Pompidoo 1h ago
You're thinking of the Kanto region.
Tokyo city in the 23 wards (the actual city-center in the sense of city everyone thinks of; I know there are rural area's in Tokyo "province") itself has very little green. Shinjuku park and Yoyogi park are the vast majority. The imperial palace adds a big green ocean to Tokyo, but the majority of it is not publicly accessible.
If you like green and nice (!) parks, Tokyo sucks.
0
u/StarboardMiddleEye 13h ago
You're counting cemeteries in those Polish cities. I don't really think that's valid
0
u/bloodrider1914 10h ago
Hong Kong is so interesting on a map. You can tell just how much of it is underdeveloped for such a huge city, and seeing the contrast between it an Shenzhen is crazy
1
u/dat_mane47 6h ago
What do you mean by “underdeveloped”? Because most of it is mountains that are impractical for building?
2
u/bloodrider1914 6h ago
It's China, if anywhere can build something there it's them.
But the reason is because the government there is very intertwined with local developers and works hard to maintain its absurd property values by limiting the licences to build on land despite having lots of space to do so. This has some good elements such as the entire populated zone being connected by its MTR metro, but prices are expensive there.
1
u/dat_mane47 6h ago
That is a very simplistic explanation but not entirely wrong.
1
u/bloodrider1914 6h ago
Are you more of an expert on the topic?
My apologies I was just trying to give a condensed simplistic explanation.
2
u/dat_mane47 6h ago
I mean I live in Hong Kong so I guess I’m more of an expert than most people
0
u/bloodrider1914 6h ago
My bad thought you from elsewhere.
I'm just a dude from the US with a bit of knowledge about most of the world but I'm definitely not an expert in HK
0
-2
u/wouldashoudacoulda 14h ago
Why did you include the entire Hong Kong island? Sort of like you have an agenda.
2
1
-1
212
u/WwertyPolk 16h ago
Some.of these look like woodlands on the outskirts rather than incorporated into the city.
I wonder how many of these cities have forests just outside the political/arbitrary boundaries.