W. Village isn’t
pining for trees
on street: Report
BY GABE HERMAN
Downtown Manhattan has some of the most
and least tree-dense areas of the city, according
to a recent study.
The report was done by real estate Web site localize.
city, which ranked neighborhoods in every borough
except Staten Island based on the number of
trees per square mile. The trees considered for the
study were those on sidewalks and maintained by the
city.
The West Village has the fourth-most trees over all,
with 5,102 trees per square mile. Park Slope came in
third, Floral Park was second, and Cobble Hill was
fi rst, with 5,783 trees per square mile.
Gramercy was eighth on the list, with 4,687 trees
per square mile. Other Manhattan neighborhoods in
the top 10 included the Upper East Side at number
fi ve and the Upper West Side in 10th place.
The city has made a push in recent years to add
more trees, including the 2007 launch of the Million-
TreesNYC initiative by the Parks Department under
former Mayor Bloomberg. The one millionth tree in
that program was planted in 2015.
Parks also has a street tree map for the entire
city, which includes statistics about the environmental
benefi ts trees provide to New York. Each year,
trees reduce carbon dioxide in the city by more than
612,000 tons and remove 635 tons of air pollutants.
Trees’ other benefi ts include energy conservation, intercepting
storm water, and of course shady relief on
sweltering summer days.
In City Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s recent
progress report in this paper, he touted the importance
of adding trees to the local landscape. He
said he has allocated more than $800,000 for new
street trees and tree guards in his Council District
3 (Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen), with
several hundred new trees scheduled to arrive this
winter.
Subsequently, in response to the localize.city report
that shows the West Village is among the leaders in
tree density, Johnson on Aug. 20 tweeted that every
neighborhood should follow suit.
“As the councilmember for District 3, my goal is to
fi ll every empty tree pit in our district with a new tree
by the time I leave offi ce,” he tweeted. “Street trees
have many benefi ts and every neighborhood across
NYC should be lined with them!”
The tree study included some sobering news for
Manhattan, however, as two neighborhoods were
among the worst in tree-density. The Garment District
had the third-fewest number of trees per square
mile at 327. And Little Italy had the fourth-fewest at
875 trees per square mile.
14 September 5, 2019 TVG Schneps Media