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Could miniature forests help air-condition cities?
- aliasEli 5y agoWhat I especially like about his approach that he selects local species. This helps other local species like plants and animals.
- edoceo 5y agoOh man. When Seattle was removing the Fun Forest from Seattle Center I remember calling the council and asking them to replace with a real forest. Would have been cool (literally and figuratively) to have an acre or two of Cascadia native trees so close to a downtown core. Got a glass museum and a astro-turf kids park instead.
- darksaints 5y agoNot to say that that wouldn't be pretty cool, but we also have Discovery Park and it's only like a couple of miles away from Seattle Center. It's a legitimate Cascadian forest.
- edoceo 5y agoFriend, this park is awesome. It's got loads of env features. Meadow, forest, beach, the pond trail rocks. And Carkeek is amazing too. I love parks - it's why I wanted another one :)
- spodek 5y agoWow, right out of the song: They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . . . They took all the trees and put them in a tree museum, and charged the people a dollar and a half to see them. Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you got 'til it's gone? We know what not to do and sleepwalk into it anyway. Joni Mitchell: https://youtu.be/94bdMSCdw20 https://youtu.be/94bdMSCdw20 Counting Crows: https://youtu.be/tvtJPs8IDgU https://youtu.be/tvtJPs8IDgU
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoLots of decent sized parks in Seattle. Would another one be bad? No. Would it automatically be better than whatever they actually built? Also no. Cities are places for people, and anything in a city economically kinda has to serve people. There are tons of forests around Seattle, and they are great. But I don't know if the marginal acre in Seattle needs to be used for a tiny, probably not self-sustaining replica.
- nostromo 5y ago“Fun Forest” in Seattle wasn’t a forest - it was a paved area with some low-budget amusement park rides.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- GlennS 5y agoAdelaide kind of has something like this: the city centre is surrounded by a ring of trees, which is in turn surrounded by a big road.
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/gl6cY https://archive.is/gl6cY
- lukas099 5y agoI want to create a miniature forest on my property one day. Does anyone here have experience doing anything like that?
- foxhop 5y agoI have a small food forest on my 1/3 plot in US CT Zone 6b. I've a YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/c/RussellBallestrini https://youtube.com/c/RussellBallestrini still trying to get to 1k subs since that unlocks a whole slew of features to grow a channel. I'm at a disadvantage until then. My future goal is to buy a much bigger parcel of land and help nature establish a regenerative food forest and figure out enough about trust law to keep it that way in perpetuity after my death.
- newaccount2021 5y agoDeed restrictions are broken all the time. If a future owner really wants to mow down your forest, it's really just a matter of persistence
- acidbaseextract 5y agoYou've got my sub. Permaculture is good stuff.
- mitchbob 5y agoNot quite what you're asking for, but the renowned Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife turned his family's worn-out cattle farm in Brazil into a thriving forest, which is now a nature preserve. [1] [2] There's a segment about it in the documentary about Salgado, The Salt of the Earth. [3] Quite an inspiring story. [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/sebastiao-salgado-forest-trees-180956620/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/sebastiao-salgad... [2] https://institutoterra.org/ https://institutoterra.org/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_of_the_Earth_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_of_the_Earth_(2014_fi...
- oh_sigh 5y agoI do. My advice is: Start now and figure the rest out later. Building something like this you need a multi-decade timespan to see your vision come even close to fruition.
- dang_is_3r3ct 5y agoYou what might help? Not consuming everything in sight, as fast as you can. But yeah ok trees.
- martyvis 5y agoIn Western Sydney (as we were heading to the worst Summer ever with devastating bush fires), this study was saying that just having the right street trees could make a 10 deg. C (18F) difference. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-21/western-sydney-heatwave-alleviated-by-tree-cover/11721698 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-21/western-sydney-heatwa...
- Havoc 5y agoI thought this was basically accepted fact and the barrier is more implementation. Prime city real estate is generally A) expensive and B) already taken. Neither conducive to lets plant some trees
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bobbylarrybobby 5y agoCities tend to devote a large portion of their real estate to cars. Get rid of that and you have plenty of room for trees.
- adreamingsoul 5y agoI have a fantasy of replacing roads with forest gardens.
- kumarvvr 5y agoIt is advice like this that gives ammo to those in power to outright reject important ideas. You can't "get rid" of real estate for cars. Why not make it mandatory to have a certain number of trees per unit size of parking lots? Cars are cooler in the shade and you can provide employment for upkeep of the trees and cleaning.
- ajmadesc 5y agoOh but you can! Paris, London, and I'm sure countless other cities in Europe have pedestrianized or reduced traffic in large areas. The Netherlands has done this in most cities. 99.99% of suburbanites couldn't afford their lifestyle if it weren't for obsurd gov subsidies of infrastructure / petrol industry. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
- vladvasiliu 5y ago> 99.99% of suburbanites couldn't afford their lifestyle if it weren't for obsurd gov subsidies of infrastructure / petrol industry. Don't know how it is in the US, but over here in France (and I presume most of Europe) I'm not sure how much the petrol industry is subsidized, given the high taxes levied on gas – around 60% of the price paid at the pump goes to taxes [0]. Of course, this being France, taxes are themselves taxed [0], but still... --- [0] https://www.economie.gouv.fr/cedef/prix-carburants https://www.economie.gouv.fr/cedef/prix-carburants In French, but the relevant quotes are: In France, taxes account for approximately 60% of the gas price at the pump. 20% VAT, applied to the whole amount, TICPE (Internal Tax on the Consumption of Energy Products) included.
- nine_k 5y agoNYC is so lucky to have several major parks with relatively many trees, and to keep them from being built over for so long. Not real forests, though.
- kumarvvr 5y agoI think we have to abandon the norms of aesthetics and, at-least temporarily, create tree management groups to select and plant trees in an around cities. You cut down on cooling costs, improve air quality and provide numerous jobs. Sure, you don't like a tree near your home, but suck up. We need trees to save the environment.
- dylan604 5y ago>Sure, you don't like a tree near your home Who says that? Is this sarcasm? I don't think I've ever heard someone say they don't like trees. It's the developers that don't like trees because it makes it more difficult to put up their cookie cutter tiky tacky little boxes.
- etempleton 5y agoReally depends on the tree. Trees can cause problems. They can fall on homes, or the roots can get into the foundation and cause issues. You also have to worry about leaves clogging up your rain gutters and potentially causing water to leak under your siding. With that said, they have a lot of benefits too. Large shade trees can significantly lower energy bills in the summer. And evergreens positioned properly can help break up winter winds to slightly reduce heating costs. Dare I say in many parts of the world well positioned trees are probably the better choice at reducing energy costs than roof top solar.
- unishark 5y agoTrees add value to a house so I'd say on balance people prefer them. Though this calculation may unfairly presume all things are equal (i.e., damage caused by a tree is not included) and less desirable trees that hurt value got removed by the seller. But for the purposes of this topic where we're talking about planting trees, issues with planting the wrong kind of tree or in the wrong spot on the property don't apply.
- aidenn0 5y agoI don't like jacaranda trees near my house. Most others are fine
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- DoreenMichele 5y agoThis is fantastic: They then select 100 or so local plant species to deploy. These are chosen by surveying the nearby area on foot instead of relying on published guidebooks, which have a habit of being out of date or even simply wrong.
- fy20 5y agoIn my area there are a lot of pine forests around, and if you walk through you would probably think "what a lovely natural forest". Except the native trees were all cut down and replaced with these ~75 years ago.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y agoThat has the risk of assuming an invasive species that has adapted well is native, further propagating the problem. A mixed approach would be ideal.