Comments on: Income inequality can be seen from space

By: takurospirit

takurospirit — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 01:40:00 +0000

I’m in a kind of poor subdivision in a kind of poor town, but people have a very negative view of this area. I don’t know what they base it on. I’ve never seen much happen around here, but there are typically one to two trees on every person’s boulevard and a few trees in our front and back yards. Some of them very large. This is a city with a reputation for section 8 housing and very inept/corrupt government officials but we have lots of trees!

By: mykie242

mykie242 — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:51:00 +0000

I’m am an equal-opportunity under-the-table employer.

By: Jayson Osmars

Jayson Osmars — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 18:32:00 +0000

Can’t afford to feed them and your family too?

j/k :)

By: Ito Kagehisa

Ito Kagehisa — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 16:48:00 +0000

Hmmm… I think I remember Ernie Pyle mentioning that?

By: jonolan

jonolan — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 14:02:00 +0000

That might have been due to a city ordinance, actually. Some areas a now requiring trees like eucalyptus to be removed because of the huge fire hazard they present.

By: literatewench

literatewench — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 17:46:00 +0000

Huh. I’ve been using Google Maps to spot neighborhoods with trees so I’ll know where to get a hotel pretty much since google maps with satellite view came out. Never get a hotel where there ain’t no trees.

By: cassandravert

cassandravert — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 17:14:00 +0000

Sacramento, California used to give trees to any resident who wanted them. At one point the city had more trees than were there originally.

Some of its more expensive suburbs, which came along recently, have not seen its trees mature yet, and this would skew the results in any growing area.

My parents’ 40 yr old suburb is wonderfully forested with some original live oaks as well as trees planted by residents. However, as the foliage filled in, the crime level and social status of the residents got worse. It is still a nice suburb, but not what it was before growth caught up with it.

By: Jenna M.

Jenna M. — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 03:58:00 +0000

I own a house in west philadelphia in a low income neighborhood but moved in with my husband in a relatively affluent mainline suburb outside of philly. Just today I was thinking this very thing that the moment I crossed the city line into the burbs there is an explosion of green otherwise lacking in the cement townhousing tenements of most of philly… even gentrifying spaces of philly are still relatively nude (south philly, northern liberties and so on) because the townhouses were originally built by planners who wanted to cram as many houses into an acre as possible to the sale prices they would have gotten for them. My house in west philly was blazing hot in the summer and since moving to the burbs a mere one mile from the city line, my mornings are now birdsong and not cars booming, ambulances sirening and people screaming at each other at all times of day and night. I have to say my peace of mind and ease of rest is much better outside the city. From my experience this correlation would be apt.

By: tubacat

tubacat — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 21:38:00 +0000

I remember reading somewhere, years ago, about Italians in World War II who stopped planting and tending their olive trees, because they didn’t think their sons would be around to inherit them…

By: $6143719

$6143719 — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 20:37:00 +0000

Hopefully Google captures you cutting it down using White landscapers…..

By: slayer1

slayer1 — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 18:17:00 +0000

It does not cost more to have desert landscaping in Arizona (or any desert). It costs substantially less. There the problem is Eastern (and Michigan and Minnesota and…) transplants wanting all their trees and shrubs from home (and allergies)
Mesquite and Palo Verde trees ftw!

By: Chris Blanar

Chris Blanar — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 16:56:00 +0000

Here in Fort Lauderdale, I’ve noticed the same thing, only seasonally, with grass/lawns: lush green grass = affluent, dry yellow grass = not so much. During the dry season, which runs from November to April, those who want to water their lawns have two options: use municipal tap water (an expensive proposition) or pay someone to dig a well and install/maintain a pump and sprinkler system (also expensive). Those who cannot afford either option (or who don’t care) have yellow grass in the winter. Google Earth shows it clearly, of course, but it is every bit as evident when you drive around town.

By: Robert Little

Robert Little — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 16:39:00 +0000

Here in the deep south, trees are frequently found in poorer neighborhoods, and many newer ones in the burbs are what are lacking. Locally, though, the most visible indicator of income are bicycle lanes. We have a large population for whom bicycling is the only means of transportation (working poor), yet those areas have a clear lack of bicycle lanes. Meanwhile, the more affluent areas, where most of the bicycling is recreational, have wonderful, and frequently wide, bicycle lanes.
A few years back I noted that a major city bus terminus in our city, which is located far in front of a large shopping mall, edge of the parking lot, and has plenty of bicycle racks; we also have a “Bikes on Buses” program here as well. But, getting to the terminus is dangerous, as it sits at the intersection of two major roads, there is a lack of bicycle lanes to it, and pedestrian traffic is not even a consideration due to a dangerous lack of sidewalks. This shopping mall and terminus are between two major working and lower middle class areas.
But, hey, at least they have the bicycle racks.

By: John Vance

John Vance — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 16:31:00 +0000

Exactly, the more wealthy people I know don’t have pools, they go to their lake homes.

By: rocketpjs

rocketpjs — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 15:59:00 +0000

Doesn’t apply where I live. Most of the top level wealthy do have trees all over their property (which tends to be large and overlook the water). Most of the middles seem to have big houses on clearcut land with tiny trees. Some of us have older houses with a few trees, and I personally have a couple small trees but a forest behind my house as well as across the street.

By: dragonfrog

dragonfrog — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 15:23:00 +0000

I guess I’m bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood – as much as I appreciate the beauty of the trees around our house, I kind of wish one of them would get up and move to our neighbours’ place.

I’ve got a vegetable garden that doesn’t get enough sun. The neighbour has a featureless green lawn that they never seem to use much.

By: dragonfrog

dragonfrog — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 15:09:00 +0000

Doesn’t work where I live – Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Our area, and the ones a bit closer to downtown even more so, are mainly working-class, have above-average crime rates, far above-average visible homelessness, and lots of beautiful mature trees.

The rich folks mainly live out in neighbourhoods that were planted in wheat ten years ago – there are trees there, but they’re little spindly things.

By: Sofia Ortiz

Sofia Ortiz — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 14:16:00 +0000

So it’s not that money grows on trees, but that trees grow on money?

By: Magenta Griffith

Magenta Griffith — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 13:03:00 +0000

In Minneapolis 20 years ago, if you looked down from a plane in summer, all you could see was trees, except for a few square blocks in the downtown area. Not that way now – because of Dutch Elm disease. The city has replanted with other species as much as it could – poor areas as well as rich – but trees take time.

By: Moriarty

Moriarty — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 12:51:00 +0000

It does seem to, actually, just with a few confounding factors. It does seem that street trees, rooftop gardens, and proximity to parks all seem to have some correlation to income. (Which is odd, because the city will plant street trees anywhere if a resident requests them and its physically possible.) However, density variation, the fact that low income housing complexes were designed with loads of green space, and the constant shifts in gentrification (which greenification would lag behind) throw off the clear picture.

By: Brad Bell

Brad Bell — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 11:17:00 +0000

I reckon each tree is worth about 50k of actual value on the simple basis that the streets with trees are extremely desirable and those without trees are awful places to live. Most people will agree one street is better than another, but they won’t know why. It’s the trees.

You can can look at a plane of concrete, or you can watch hundreds of leaves twisting in the wind, forming complex ripples across the tree like a rolling fire. Ironically, the one generating enormous amounts of complexity and stimulation is actually relaxing, and the one generating a geometric shape with a texture is experienced as boring and stressful.

I think the article underplays the values of trees. Class or wealth is a distraction. Designing for suitable living is everything. Trees are fundamental.

By: ritholtz

ritholtz — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:14:00 +0000

If you liver in a rental, you tend not to plant trees — as opposed to someone who owns the property.

Perhaps this is revealing the visible differences between ownership and rentals

By: andygates

andygates — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 09:06:00 +0000

As Neil Gaiman said, “They name it after whatever they bulldozed to built it on top of.” So achingly true here in the UK, where everything was something interesting once.

By: Ethan Campbell

Ethan Campbell — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 08:03:00 +0000

Up to a point, for 2 reasons :
1) The easy availability of air/sat photography meant tax collection agencies started to use it as a lifestyle (or fraud) indicator despite the fact that
2) They became cheaper and cheaper to build, leading to democratization of swimming pools and the loss of their status symbol

That lead the moderately wealthy to avoid them (favoring landscaping), and the really wealthy to either go toward the “natural” pool trend, or avoid them completely, going as far as removing existing ones.

Nowadays pools are a status symbol of lower middle-classes, or vacation homes to rent.

By: Kramski

Kramski — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 07:21:00 +0000

yes. came here to say the same. maybe it just means we’re all rich!

By: CH

CH — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 06:33:00 +0000

Yea, but there are still differences between different areas… not as much as, say, in the US, but still…

It’s really about this being a sparsely populated country. We don’t have miles and miles of nothing but suburbia. Put for instance “Espoo, Finland, Nokia” to zoom in on Nokia headquaters. Espoo is the second largest city in Finland (Helsinki, the largest, is directly east from where you zoomed in). What you see is… green! Lots and lots of forests and trees.

One of the most expensive, and affluent, areas in the country are just to the southwest of the area you zoomed to (Westend & Haukilahti). Going west along the coast you can’t really see from the areal picture which areas are the more affluent and less ones. From ground level… yes, you can see from what type of houses there are and how they look, but not from the amount of trees.

By: Henry Pootel

Henry Pootel — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 05:19:00 +0000

Doesn’t everyone know you can’t see the poorest for the trees?

By: kevin casey

kevin casey — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 03:39:00 +0000

A very clear example is in Montreal where L’Acadie boulevard divides the low income Parc Extension neighborhood from the very upscale Town of Mount Royal. TMR has a fence all along the road to keep the riff-raff out, nice.

http://goo.gl/maps/b3xa

By: Comman Dax

Comman Dax — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 03:07:00 +0000

I wish L.A. County protected trees other than oaks. My landlord went scorched-earth a few months ago and slaughtered all the shade trees that have gently graced my duplex since I moved in 15 years ago, providing shade and habitat for me and the multitudinous creatures that lurk on the property. Mere eucalyptus, rubber and kurrajong trees, unfortunately… they dropped leaves which require occasional sweeping, so out they went. I wept for days when they murdered the Seussy fig tree in the front yard to put in a platform for the trash barrels. I think I like trees more than people, sometimes. Most of the time, actually.

By: Ito Kagehisa

Ito Kagehisa — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 02:39:00 +0000

Plant seven more & you’re upscaling!