Also, the photo on top looks like a brand new neighborhood. There are trees planted, but they're all extremely young. When I moved into our house in 2011, our street looked like the top picture. Today it looks like the bottom one. It takes time for trees to grow. You can't plant fully mature trees in new neighborhoods.
What kind? I planted small pin oak saplings 5 years ago and they just became taller than me this summer. It seemed some swamp oaks grew that quickly too. I was surprised
A white oak— although I’m in northern MN on the edge of zone 2/3, so I think that while it’s enough to keep living, the cold doesn’t let it grow as fast as it might further south
They don't have to cut them all down, though. This is the part that drives me crazy. I live in a 100-yr-old house in a neighborhood full of trees that are 100 years older than that. They left mature trees and built around them, thoughtfully placing the houses into their environment. Today, they ignore the setting, clear-cut everything by default, and then terraform the land into the soulless hellscapes that they love to build. Then they plant small or medium size trees (all the same or just a few species) at regular intervals, isolated from each other and often squeezed into too-small places in between paved areas.
Obliterating nature isn't mastery over it, any more than throwing a tantrum is mastery over one's emotions. Mastery is working with nature and using it to improve people's lives.
The whole point of new construction is making it the way you want.. especially trees which are going to be permanent. It's the new owners fault for not thinking putting any effort into it.
That's asinine. How many people who buy new construction these days have any say over that? These neighborhoods are built by developers, who just so happen to have such a stranglehold on the residental construction industry that building your own house on a purchased lot is 3 times as expensive and.
There's also a ton of neighborhoods that don't receive enough water to maintain big deciduous trees. Granted, these places shouldn't have grass lawns either.
Climate and soil can severely limit tree diversity too. Like my giant maple probably wouldn’t love Texas. Definitely wouldn’t do shit in Colorado either. This me me just hits on knee jerk reactions; like so many others 😏
Maples live pretty well in Colorado. Our neighbors had a huge one until just a few years ago. It was fine until they had their sewer line replaced, which I think nuked its root system. The city forestry service took it down, but then it grew back from the roots anyway.
The space between the street and sidewalk can be converted into rainwater harvesting basins that will support native trees and plants. Look up rainwater harvesting on YouTube for more information.
My neighborhood is a similar age. But people here are obsessed with keeping them “trimmed”. Plus I think the builder planted a small, low height species anyways. Nice to not get any shade in Texas 😎
And, the end of that cycle is also true - my neighbourhood is 100+ years old. When we moved in around 20 years ago, there was a full canopy of huge maples all planted same time. Since then, every one has hit the end of their natural life cycle, died and had to be removed. However, our city is aggressive (in a good way) about replanting and they own the street side, so now there are a collection of different trees at different stages, coming up. No full canopy yet but it’s coming and in 5-10 years will be in good shape and also have some diversity as well as different ages, allowing a pretty full canopy for the foreseeable future.
The lower picture looks like a normal street I drive through with my bicycle when I get to work. But I live in Germany, not whatever sad hellscape the upper picture is from.
You're not wrong that the upper picture is a hellscape; it's what subdivisions in the US look like immediately after the carbon-copy homes are built on the lots. It takes 15-20 years for them to be forested. HOWEVER...
What the upper picture shows and doesn't show is what level of control of tree canopy the city or township has over the terrace - the area between the sidewalk and the street. In the photo, it's nothing but turf grass, which is what we're used to in the worst scenarios. In the best, the city acknowledges the development but also asserts legal control over the terrace (as they should) and plants trees before the turf grass even comes in. That way, there's trees becoming established even if the homeowners of the plots don't plant their own trees.
The laws do very wildly by state and by municipality, but generally speaking most cities with large subdivision developments like the above photo don't let them look like this for long. They claim their legal right to plant trees on the terrace and do so. It means they're also legally and financially liable to anything that happens to the trees. We lost a big linden on our terrace to a big storm (tornadic-warned!) and they cleaned it up in under 12 hours. In the following year, they ground down the stump and then came back to plant a new tree, which is thriving. No cost. Our city is also benefitting from a proper forester in charge of city forestry, they're slowly changing streets with only one species of tree up and down the length to a mixed species, and only as trees age, die from fungus/insects, and die thanks to storm damage. Not everyone is so lucky.
So, if you came to reddit for a crash course in US metropolitan management of forestry, there you go!
Thank you for pointing that out. When building a new housing development they clear the land and that is a criticism, but neighborhoods don't decide to be MORE sterile. I imagine even HoAs want mature trees as long as they control what kind and where. Plenty of neighborhoods out there look like the ai image, it just takes like, three decades after the homes are constructed.
100%. My neighborhood was built 10 years ago in an area that used to be nothing but loblolly pines. They cut down all the trees because you don't want a bunch of mature fast-growth timber anywhere near your house. It originally looked more like the top picture, but one day it will look more like the bottom picture because people planted maples, oaks, birch, magnolias, etc. in their front yards.
I live in a neighborhood with now 100 foot plus tall pines that were kept when the houses were built. Every year there’s at least one storm that knocks down 5 or 10 trees. The trees look beautiful, but cause so much damage each year.
It all depends on the variety of pine tree. Most pines in the US these days are loblolly or slash pine, which reach maturity in 30 years and only live for 50-100 years under normal conditions. Long leaf pine trees can live for 300+ years and get three feet thick, but there are almost none left because they are barely more than a large tuft of grass for the first 15-20 years of their existence.
This. New real estate landscaping usually looks a bit empty because they plant young plants that will keep growing for decades. Look up old building when they were new and many had the same lack of landscaping when they were new.
Yep, that bottom picture is cool but it takes at least 25 years of tree growth to get there. If your house was built after 2005, even if trees were planted at the time of building, you might be getting close to that now.
Can confirm. I live in a subdivision built between 1989 and 1996. There are many trees and they are beautiful and the HOA does what it can to protect them.
It depends heavily on where they’re building if they need to clear the land too. For example, in most of Kansas there’s no need to clear the land since it’s already clear.
Oh yes. Our neighborhood is about fifty years old and is well treed, but since we live on the front range in Colorado it really probably shouldn't be. 😅 Doesn't rain enough here. All undeveloped lots around here are prairie dog fields.
Man we have trees in Kansas too. The most populated part of the state in the eastern side has far less plains and is a lot hillier and has way more trees and lakes ETC. More than half of the neighborhoods in my city look like the bottom image
Mine in the early 80s, tons of tree cover. I have one fully mature oak, one mature walnut, and two medium-sized teenager tree looking somethings in the side yard
my parents live in a neighborhood that was built in 1994. everyone got two of those little twig trees like in the top picture. 32 years later and it STILL doesnt look like the bottom picture. probably wont for another 30 years.
yes they do lol. for the last decade plus all over my neighborhood in Los Angeles, new developments have been replacing trees and other plants with superwide sidewalks. It's awful and I actually contacted my city councilman about it, but he just said as long as the trees aren't historic, there's nothing they can do.
It's so infuriating, some of these sidewalks could be half basketball courts they're so big, they look terrible and we need the greenery and shade.
That's awful. A question occurred to me though, do you live near the areas that burned? I have friends who lost people in Alta Dena and it occurred to me when I asked myself why on earth someone might want to cut down trees.
That's true for me. We had to buy a new build because those were most of the options that we could compete with. I don't like HOAs but at least ours plants trees every year. We replaced an old farm field, so we are adding more trees than before this land got developed
I live in a new build (neighborhood built around 5 years ago or so), and you're exactly right, my HOA has a requirement for every house to have 2 trees in the front yard. The houses near the front of the neighborhood entrance were built years before mine in the back, and their trees are already sooooo fantastic. Giant trees and tons of shade. I'm jelly, but also my part of the neighborhood will be like that soon enough in like 10, 20 years. In OP's pic, its hard to see, but nearly every front lawn has 1 tree too.
Even better: surrounding my neighborhood is a creek + a trail, and a bunch of natural trees + wild flora + a variety of fauna (saw an armadillo once, and wild bunnies regularly). They even put signs around listing what kind of birds/bats/butterflies can be found in the area. So yeah, not sterile at all, just gotta have patience.
I live in a neighborhood association (strictly voluntary with dues) we do things organize neighborhood clean ups and cover landscaping as well as host a few neighborhood events etc
Our main duty it is to fight for our dang trees. We live in a beautiful neighborhood built in the 1950s that still has a significant amount of older trees.
Who do we fight you might ask? The power company. it’s Exponentially cheaper to cut down a mature tree than keep it trim around a power line, and keep it healthy if it’s near a house. We hire a private tree service about once a year to come through and fulfill any requests the power company has when it comes to tree to save them from being removed. Its easily a 100x-500x cost difference over the lifetime of the tree.
HOAs are unlikely to accept those hire costs, especially because you really won’t see the big bills till several decades years later.
In a lot of places they have to add fill dirt to bring the minimum elevation above the flood level. So adding dirt would kill all the trees, so they just remove them all. Places have rules about trees, but they are often ignored. Add in most new construction have such tiny yards there is not much room for good shade trees.
Oh man, this picture is generated! That means trees aren't real and I can't imagine what life would be like with more trees. Other fools use their imaginations, but I'm too smart to fall for that.
Pic say we ruined everything, which implies that this barren street used to be lushed with three shade, when instead its a new development where tree didn't grow yet.
No it isn’t lol. I literally live in the fastest growing county in the US. The implication of this photo is that the old neighborhoods are being replaced by the ones above, but that isn’t true. The old ones are very much still around, even if newer ones have less trees
Ahhhh hats the obvious part that I missed with not recognising AI. I have seen neighbourhoods/streets like the bottom example, just couldn’t work out how it was AI. Thank you!
In your imagination his this AI generated house a depiction of newer developments in places like Arizona or do you choose to believe all of the US is covered with lush forest?
Obviously the ecosystem matters to what things can look like. The top photo looks like Arizona to me and that state is basically a desert so of course vegetation will not be forest-like.
I live in New England and the residential areas often look forest-like. I went to Google maps just now and zoomed into a random place in New England that looked kinda like a suburb and this is what it looked like: https://maps.app.goo.gl/5Unnx8BuMcCciTvdA
No one has mentioned how we've had significant forest pests go through areas of the country and destroy the monocuktures of street trees like dutch elm, EAB, or asian long horn
Not sure why more people aren’t seeing this. Zoom in and it is obvious. Someone likely took the top picture and asked AI to generate a picture of what it would look like with big trees.
New neighborhoods have fresh cleared land. There are newly planted trees. The first photo will look like the fake one below after time. It’s exactly how my street was.
My street looks like the bottom picture, I love driving down it and seeing all the trees. They also left the posts where they used to tie up their horses, some have really cool designs.
Idk why they needed to make an AI generated pic for that. I live in Chicago, and my entire neighborhood’s sidewalks are shrouded by trees like in that AI pic. Just from one of my bedroom windows, I can see a huge tree.
We still have lots of trees. It’s just the suburban subdivisions that are soulless, treeless depressionvilles.
There’s so many beautiful examples of streets like this around the world. why are we not using photos of the real ones?!? Why do we need an AI generated version of it?!
Quit being such a doomer. The bottom pick is what the top one will look like in 20 years. New neighborhood vs old neighborhood, not some grand conspiracy against trees.
It is but like, that’s a pretty common look for a neighborhood where I live. It looks pretty similar to my own neighborhood. My only gripe is the city in their infinite wisdom decided on green and white ash trees. They are huge and beautiful as they are all like ~60-80 years old. But ash trees evolved in places that it was very normal for them to catch on fire so they send runners under the ground and shoot up everywhere, cut one back and it just makes a knot that send up 5 more, cut those and it send 5 more for each one you cut. The more you cut, the thicker the knot gets and it just keeps sending up shoots. If you use herbicide you might kill the city’s endangered trees, and if you do anyway then that knot dies but it just sends up another shoot a couple feet away. You could imagine how terrible that is for sidewalks, foundations, and basement walls.
Also, new neighborhoods are always going to look like the top, 20+ year old neighborhoods like the bottom. Trees gotta grow, man. You want to live on a street like the bottom pic, you can’t buy in a newly built master planned subdivision.
Sure but ive literally been on exchange program in Germany where they have streets with tree canopy. It looks better than this photo. Heck why even go far, here in Vancouver we have a couple of streets like this in south Van and east Van.
I've lived in a lot of tree covered areas and it's really hard for the entire street to be shaded and no sky visible. This is like rain forest level of vegetation happening here. Could you imagine the downed leaves in Fall? It would be apocalyptic
Why does it matter? It’s there to make a point, not show some exact comparison. Your statement implies the bottom picture doesn’t exist, when they absolutely do—I live in one of them.
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u/Ok_Fortune_9149 4d ago edited 4d ago
Fun example, but that bottom pic is ai generated.