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London Street Trees

139 points| buro9 | 2 years ago |apps.london.gov.uk | reply

73 comments

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[+] simonw|2 years ago|reply
I've been Git scraping the San Francisco version of this for a few years now.

My https://github.com/simonw/sf-tree-history repo now has 444 commits (most recent one was just 4 days ago) tracking every change that's been made to https://data.sfgov.org/City-Infrastructure/Street-Tree-List/... since March 2019.

I haven't yet done anything with this data, but there is so much potential for visualizations and other fun stuff with it. If anyone wants to have a go please be my guest!

Wrote more about this project here: https://simonwillison.net/2019/Mar/13/tree-history/

[+] keepamovin|2 years ago|reply
I love the idea of syncing git commit history with data change history, like using git for a repo of data. It's actually quite possible if you use pretty printed JSON as a record format (or other simple linear text formats).

I explored more of this "git as DB backend" in some places including: https://github.com/dosyago/sirdb

Also, just as a headsup to any folks, the SF version of this "tree map" (Heh) is at: https://web.archive.org/web/20230328192805/https://bsm.sfdpw... (O site and archive seems to be down)

[+] hnbear|2 years ago|reply
London has a surprising history and love for its trees, more so than I've seen in other cities I've lived in. This means you can find a lot of fun listicles that provide history and fun facts for trees located around the city.

For example, [Great Trees of London](https://londonist.com/london/maps/great-trees-of-london-map) has a collection I'd actually enjoy walking around, and coupling with other sites in the area.

Especially in the heat the difference trees make is incredible. Moving from a tree-lined street to an open one is horrible when walking around the place.

[+] sw104|2 years ago|reply
Not to one-up you, but Sheffield in South Yorkshire has even more trees. I visited recently and was taken aback by how much coverage there was for a city center, coming from Leeds, which seems to hate trees.

If I remember correctly, London has around 8.5 million trees (for a population of almost 9 million, 1:1 tree:person) and Sheffield has around 4.5 million (for a much smaller population of less than 600,000, 7.5:1 tree:person). Sheffield has more trees per person than any other city in Europe.

Sheffield council tried to cut down thousands of trees a few years ago and it caused massive backlash, protests and arrests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_tree_felling_protest...

[+] JimDabell|2 years ago|reply
See also:

OpenTrees.org: 13,910,944 open data trees from 192 sources in 19 countries.

https://opentrees.org

https://github.com/stevage/opentrees

[+] larodi|2 years ago|reply
A friend of mine is doing something similar to this London tree but another European capital. I really don't understand why would someone _not_ integrate or just expand opentrees.org.

what is the point of having two openlayers websites? (unless of course the second is esri world atlas...)

[+] jszymborski|2 years ago|reply
Huh, looks like Montreal has one of these as well... never would have known.

https://quebio.ca/en/arbresmtl

EDIT: Wondering about the distinct areas without trees on the island? Those are buroughs that look as though they don't report to the City of Montreal. In the case of Westmount, it's because they are a distinct city.

[+] bytebot|2 years ago|reply
Did not see anyone mention what’s available in Singapore yet:

https://www.nparks.gov.sg/treessg

And you can build on it too: https://exploretrees.sg/

[+] dkdbejwi383|2 years ago|reply
This is diverging from the topic of trees quite a bit, but as a frequent visitor to SG from northern Europe, I'm always blown away by the people who can manage to do manual labour in jeans there! While I'm sweating in shorts and a light t-shirt just walking from the MRT to my destination.
[+] burkaman|2 years ago|reply
This is an unusually nice website, but if you like this, check your own city, they might have one too! For example, here's:

DC: https://trees.dc.gov/apps/3677bceead544db79a412e3ab0a68588/e...

Boston: https://boston.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?...

LA: https://losangelesca.treekeepersoftware.com/index.cfm

[+] Retric|2 years ago|reply
Interesting these maps are missing many trees such as the DC missing those around the the capital building. Presumably because different organizations are in charge of them.
[+] bloak|2 years ago|reply
There seem to be a lot of trees in the category "other". Is there more detailed data for species and variety in another database somewhere, or is there a need for a massive wiki-style tree-spotting data-gathering exercise? Could start now while they still have leaves on them and perhaps also fruit ...

A propos that, if you ask it to show just "Black Locust" and "Horse Chestnut", then nothing is shown. But those are common trees! And they are also the two whose names consist of two words. So I suspect a BUG!

[+] omh|2 years ago|reply
As a slightly more frivolous use of this website - we're approaching conker season!

Last year my kids wanted to go collecting conkers and I used a similar website (https://www.treetalk.co.uk/) to find a local place with lots of horse chestnuts.

It worked brilliantly and the kids thought I was some kind of genius for finding so many.

[+] eithed|2 years ago|reply
I'm amazed that such datasets exist. Don't know what's the purpose and who is managing this but it's jus absurd (in a good way)
[+] traceroute66|2 years ago|reply
> I'm amazed that such datasets exist. Don't know what's the purpose and who is managing this but it's jus absurd (in a good way)

A significant portion of London's trees are subject to Tree Preservation Orders (TPO) and/or are located in a conservation area.[1]

If you want to do anything to a tree subject to the above, then you in conjunction with your tree surgeon need to request permission from the local authority. If you don't then you're in trouble because it is a criminal offence to remove, prune or damage protected trees.

In addition you of course have non-protected trees on public land that are owned by the local authority and so they likely have a maintenance database for those.

So it therefore goes that you require a database of said trees and hence this dataset is likely nothing more than an aggregation of the indvidual datasets from the various local authorities (of which there are 32 IIRC, hence quite a lot of data).

Here is an example of a TPO list from just one Local Authority.[2]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tree-preservation-orders-and-tre... [2] https://www.merton.gov.uk/planning-and-buildings/planning/tr...

[+] zimpenfish|2 years ago|reply
I think, at least partially, "civil engineers" - good to know where trees are as an indication of potential root problems with pavements, pipes, conduits, etc. Also for things like "where might we have road overhang problems" - if it's a conifer, probably ok, but if it's a London Plane, that might be an issue.

Oh and also to know where to send the horrifically noisy leaf blowing man who spends half his life outside in the square revving his diesel abomination.

[+] Angostura|2 years ago|reply
Worth noting that these are only the trees that line roads - so quite a few of those dark areas are actually parks and woods crammed with trees.
[+] badcppdev|2 years ago|reply
You're absolutely right. I think this is of trees that need checking and maintenance to keep roads, cars, pedestrians safe. Hence the URL /street_trees/

Parks and woods would be maintained in a different process. Obviously it's acceptable and even desirable to have fallen down trees in woods and some parks.

[+] astro-|2 years ago|reply
Trees on private property are also missing — in front of people's houses/communal areas in front of blocks of flats. There's quite a few of those around me that I would consider to be "street trees".

Pretty cool site, though!

[+] harel|2 years ago|reply
I've checked my local area, and already spotted more mistakes and omissions than correct tree markers. Not saying it as a complaint - there are so many more trees here than specified in the map, I bet the map only shows about 20-30%.
[+] oliver-rock|2 years ago|reply
It says on the website that it shows 800 000 out of an estimated 8 million, so it shows just 10%
[+] zabzonk|2 years ago|reply
i should point out that not all of the uk cares as much for its trees: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/06/sheffield-ci...
[+] sw104|2 years ago|reply
A select minority in the local council didn't care, but the citizens and those who protested (and got arrested) over this overwhelmingly did.

Since the protests, the council stopped cutting the trees down and reversed course.

Sheffield has more trees per person than any other city in Europe. Around 4.5 million trees for a population of 600,000 (7.5:1).

[+] have_faith|2 years ago|reply
This is specifically the council. Local resident care an awful lot about their trees and there are many local campaigns to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again. I think the local labour party ended up replacing some of the MP’s involved. (I live in Sheffield)
[+] zabzonk|2 years ago|reply
one thing most people don't realise is how much park and woodland london has.
[+] zzbn00|2 years ago|reply
Yes, although on this map I think the trees in parks are not shown
[+] quickthrower2|2 years ago|reply
And then there is the green belt around London. This sort of thing probably encourages building up not out which is probably a good thing.
[+] keepamovin|2 years ago|reply
That's beautiful, thank you for that!