More trees are the answer to cool down our cities
Leaving trees in the ground and planting new ones could help future proof new development sites against extreme heatwww.theguardian.com/…
"Heat is produced unevenly by cities themselves, especially given the way many urban settlements have been developed to date. As detailed in the well-understood “urban heat island” effect, dense building materials like concrete take longer to heat up and cool down. Metals reflect heat back into city environments. Buildings block the wind and stop the city from cooling down. Vehicles and other machinery all produce heat, including the air-conditioning that many of us rely on to cool our internal retreats. All this means that in general the outdoor environment of a city is several degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside.
"Leafy suburbs” have a head start when it comes to seizing the temperature controlling properties of trees. They also tend to be the older, more expensive and better built suburbs and thus inaccessible to the majority of city residents who live in hotter, more air-conditioning-dependent areas and buildings. In growing recognition of trees as an important form of public infrastructure, numerous initiatives are seeking to increase tree cover.
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"Besides tree planting and maintenance, therefore, protecting existing trees is paramount. At present, development for new housing tends to occur on greenfield sites where one of the first steps is to remove existing trees to enable the movement of building equipment and later cars. While some of this tree removal is compensated by later plantings, the net loss, uncertainty and lag time in accessing the ecological services of trees can be immense.
The development industry needs to rethink the term “greenfield” towards “treefields”. This would be a rediscovery of well-known landscape ecological principles put forward by Ian McHarg and others in the Woodlands development more than 50 years ago. Designing new housing leaving the trees in the ground and the existing ecosystem in place, augmented with new strategically placed plantings, would help future proof new development sites against extreme heat by reducing the amount of heat the site itself produces. Combined with the role of trees in holding carbon and absorbing carbon dioxide and thus reducing the global warming that is worsening heat extremes, protecting existing trees in treefields and further afield is ever-more essential. The “bubble” we need to live in is not a glass air-conditioned dome, it is a tree canopy."
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