{"id":3364,"date":"2008-04-23T09:27:06","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T14:27:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=3364"},"modified":"2008-04-23T09:27:06","modified_gmt":"2008-04-23T14:27:06","slug":"the_luxury_of_trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/04\/the_luxury_of_trees.html","title":{"rendered":"The Luxury Of Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So <a href=\"http:\/\/ny.metro.us\/metro\/local\/article\/PlaNYC_gets_a_boost_from_unlikely_source\/12307.html\">at this rate<\/a>, it will only take $545 million more to reach the lofty goal of 1 million new trees:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>David Rockefeller and Mayor Michael Bloomberg &#8212; two of the city&#8217;s biggest philanthropists &#8212; spent yesterday afternoon in front of East Harlem&#8217;s Thomas Jefferson public housing complex, where they planted a rosebud tree. They hope it is just one of many. <\/p>\n<p>Rockefeller gave $5 million to help fund the mayor&#8217;s initiative to plant 1 million trees as part of PlaNYC, his sustainability agenda for the city. Bloomberg matched Rockefeller&#8217;s gift with his own $5 million. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re all in this together,&#8221; Bloomberg said. &#8220;We shouldn&#8217;t wait for others to do it.&#8221; Not only do the trees provide shade and clean the air, he said, they &#8220;also improve property values.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The $10 million announced yesterday will cover the cost of 18,000 new trees, &#8220;nearly three-quarters of all the trees in Central Park,&#8221; Bloomberg said. <\/p>\n<p>. . .<\/p>\n<p>He expects to have 250,000 of the 1 million trees in the ground before he leaves office. But then what? The initiative is funded by charitable donations and has no legal mandate. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They should plant jobs,&#8221; added Olga Bernabi, who works at the Jefferson Houses library. &#8220;I know a lot of people getting pink slips.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Central Park has 26,000 trees in 840 acres (31 trees an acre). New York City (at 322 square miles) has 206,080 total acres &#8212; 1 million new trees means adding 4.8 trees to each acre of land in the city. A city block is 2.5 acres. That&#8217;s 12 new trees on each city block . . . in addition to the <a href=\"http:\/\/nycgovparks.org\/sub_your_park\/trees_greenstreets\/treescount\/index.php\">592,130 street trees<\/a>, which have stocked city streets to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nycgovparks.org\/sub_your_park\/trees_greenstreets\/treescount\/treecount_summary.php\">73% capacity, with room for 220,000 more trees<\/a>. So then there are 780,000 left to be accounted for . . . um, has anyone figured out where all the new trees will go? And don&#8217;t tell us that this will simply replace old trees because that&#8217;s just cooking the books . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So at this rate, it will only take $545 million more to reach the lofty goal of 1 million new trees: David Rockefeller and Mayor Michael Bloomberg &#8212; two of the city&#8217;s biggest philanthropists &#8212; spent yesterday afternoon in front of East Harlem&#8217;s Thomas Jefferson public housing complex, where they planted a rosebud tree. They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,68,62,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bah_humbug","category-follow_the_money","category-followed_by_a_perplexed_stroke_of_the_chin","category-the_natural_world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}