Tree City

Spring is here...

The flowering cherry trees around Baltimore are coming into bloom as the warm weather arrives, spreading their perfume across the city.

As I consider the lovely springtime aroma, I am moved to make a romantic statement:
A city can never have enough trees.

Even someone who knows nothing about environmental science can easily list a handful of human-scale benefits provided by urban trees.

Trees in the median of W 33rd, Baltimore.

I was more than a little sad, then, to hear that as a result of the city's 100+ million dollar budget shortfall for 2011, the ongoing effort to plant more city trees has been halted (Link missing, Same story Here.) for 2011 .

This whole no-money-for-trees situation brings up three questions for me:

1. How many trees does the city already have?
2. How any should we have?
3. How much would it cost to meet that goal?

~o~

Our Current Urban Forest...

According to Examiner.com, Baltimore city has about 2.5 million trees. That's about 3.9 trees per person. Collectively, this forest removes 244 metric tons of "ozone pollution" from the atmosphere. [each year?](*)

~o~

Money Trees...

A tree provides services to the city, and therefore has a calculable monetary value. Maryland has a REALLY COOL tree value calculator here, which estimates the value of these services.
Some quick calculations, for fun:

• A mature White Oak, 24 inch diameter trunk, growing in front of a single-family home in my neighborhood provides $389 worth of cooling, air cleaning and storm-water abatement per year.

• A young Magnolia tree growing in a nearby park provides $54/similar benefits/year.

• An average sized American Sycamore tree growing across the street from my apartment building (Note: this one isn't hypothetical!) provides $194/benefits/year. This breaks down as 4,700 gallons storm-water absorbed, 166kWh electricity not needed for cooling and 591 pounds of CO2 removed from my air.

~o~

Urban Forests...

Before the current budget crisis, Baltimore had set a progressive agenda for repairing the city's relatively deforested landscape:

In March of 2006, Baltimore City adopted a Tree Canopy Goal of 40 percent coverage within a 30-year time frame, thus doubling the City’s existing 20 percent tree canopy coverage.(*)

This has now been put on hold.

In comparison, here are some other urban canopy percentages for similarly sized cities:
An ideal coverage of 40% is borrowed from here. I believe this is considered a 'dense' coverage.

~o~

The Green Future?...

So it seems Baltimore could use another 2.5 million trees, to top our tree-population up to 5 million.
With tree-planting on hold in Baltimore, it seems that for the moment, the effort is left up to private citizens and organizations, which is a challenge people should become aware of.

Today...



Future?...


Planting trees is a great investment. I don't know how much it costs the city to plant a tree, but even if, for the sake of argument, planting a single linden tree sapling cost them 2000$ each (including initial labor and upkeep for 5 years), the calculator shows that it pays for itself in 20 years--after that it "turns a profit".

Now consider that a private person can plant and care for a tree for less than 100$.
(coupons for $25 off that tree here)
I hope Baltimore can continue greening- without breaking the bank.

My Neighborhood's got a hole in it!

The Charles Village neighborhood in Baltimore is a dense, older residential neighborhood circa 1910's, highly walkable with moderate mixed-use zoning.

It's the kind of neighborhood that can make even suburbanites reconsider living in the city. This is a little ironic considering Charles Village itself was established as a streetcar suburb--I believe a car ran up and down St. Paul street before being torn out in the middle of the century.

Today the low 3000's blocks of St. Paul street are the commercial hub of the neighborhood. There's a small grocery, restaurants, coffee shops--and -sigh- new modern condominiums. All in all its an interesting, useful, part of the neighborhood

To some it may even sound like a new-urban paradise--but there is something strange happening here too.
In the heart of this very valuable area is a large field of weeds. Its empty, fenced-off, and it's been this way for years.



Why?

According to a very informative article in the Johns Hopkins Newsletter, a row of turn-of-the-century row homes being used as JHU frat houses and a convenience store were demolished in 2006 to make way for a supposed new block of condos.

'The Olmstead' as it was to be called, has failed to materialize. In the mean time, where there once were people and businesses there is now nothing.


View Larger Map

The developer, Struever Brothers, Eccles & Rouse, had already built another block of ugly, boring, could-have-been-built-anywhere condos across the street. They didn't sell so well, and now it seems that The Olmstead is on hold until the market picks back up.
The bad news is, this is what they said in 2007--that's BEFORE the "credit-crunch" hit the fan!
I guess we could all be waiting a while.

I laughed when I visited the Streuver Bro's website--they claim to be "transforming America's cities." I may just be a cynic, but I think its fair to say that in this case they are transforming my neighborhood into a wasteland.

The sad part , in my opinion, is that the only thing this neighborhood can look forward to someday, is the arrival of another profit-extracting monstrosity when the yuppies finally feel like their portfolios have recovered.

I realize that developers are a fact of life. Private property is good. My only question is this: Should a neighborhood as a community have any say in the evolution of their built environment?

I wish that beautiful old buildings didn't have to be demolished.

I wish they didn't have to be replaced by bland, hulking, over-sized, cynically 'modern' buildings. And furthermore, I wish that 'mixed use' didn't have to mean chain stores. Isn't that what the suburbs are for?

I wish that a lovely neighborhood in a city generally plagued by decay didn't have to be exploited to grow.

I'll be very interested to see what ever becomes of the Olmstead.
~
-finally posting again after a LONG summer vacation!
~
UPDATED: here. Feb 2010.

Mount Vernon Mnemonic

The Mount Vernon neighborhood in Baltimore is the cities oldest, and in my opinion, its prettiest district. There are some fine photos on another blog here.

Here's a funny acrostic mnemonic device I made up the other day for remembering the streets that constitute Mount Vernon.
In the course of a volunteer job I undertake a few times monthly, Ive found myself wishing I had a better grasp of the area...and thus, my mnemonic:

West to East streets:

Mnemonic	Street
Howard's	Howard
Pet	Park
Cat	Cathedral
Challenged	Charles
St. Paul's	St. Paul
Calf	Calvert
Greatly	Guilford

North to South streets:

Mnemonic	Street
Mr.	Mount Royal
Peanut	Preston
Brought	Biddle
Chase	Chase
Eagerly	Eager
Rallied	Read
More	Madison
Men	Monument
Clamoring	Center
For	Franklin
Mulberries	Mulberry

enjoy!

Sitting around Baltimore

I wanted to write a quick post about the 'urban stoop'--the small stairway used both to reach the entrance of a city dwelling and as informal social stage--before 'stoop culture' dries up again for the year.

Baltimore has thousands of stoops (on account of her thousands of row homes), and as a result of this fact, is historically well known for its 'stoop culture'--the culture of interactions taking place between friends, citizens and strangers as they sit on their stoops or walk by on the sidewalks.

As the colder weather arrives and people are pushed indoors, the streets start to revert to an emptier state and I am caught thinking about the emptying stoops and reflecting on their peculiar value to a neighborhood.


A stoop.

The stoop asks interesting questions about the way a buildings design influences the social interactions that can occur around it.

If there are utilized stoops, there are 'eyes on the street'. A neighborhood is lively and safer. Perhaps, though, residents want more privacy or more comfort? Porches offer these these qualities more abundantly, but because they are more withdrawn from the street, create less safety, in theory.

A stoop seems better than a porch at catalyzing social interaction and maintaining community safety when a certain level of safety is already present, and probably a little worse (than porches) when there's little or no pretext of street safety.

The stoop is an interesting element to consider as it applies to the concept of New Urbanism--the renewed interest promoting, creating and living in walkable, mixed use (dwellings, businesses and services in close proximity) urban neighborhoods.

What kind of social environment will people who want a 'new urbanism' be interested in? Will they want stoops? Will they sit outside or people watch? Or will they want to dash down the steps to their waiting smartcars?









A collection of porch stairs and stoops from around Charles Village, Baltimore. Baltimore is known for its large supply of stoops.

This apartment building on Calvert street exemplifies one way it can go. It features a sort of modified stoop--pretty much too narrow to sit on and facing the wrong way-- useful only as a way to get in and out.


View Larger Map

Heres another view, from the alley, showing how the straighter, wider stoops only face one another inside the protective courtyard and fence. Why not just build a porch?

Who is going to sit on these stoops, if anyone? There are no people, buildings or traffic to watch inside a courtyard.

Perhaps the people who live here don't have time to watch anyone. Perhaps there are no nearby stores, or little street traffic anyway. I wonder how this building development has and will continue to impact it's surrounding neighborhood.

I don't want to come across as 'pro' or 'anti' stoop; only to consider the wide-ranging effects of a minor design decision.


View Larger Map

Veggie-scaping

Observant people going past Baltimore City Hall lately will have noticed that the edge planters around War Memorial plaza have been transformed into vegetable gardens. The Sun mentioned the change here.

According to the article, there is quite a cornucopia under way, including:
rhubarb, cucumbers, acorn squash, cabbage, lettuce, peppers, kale, sweet corn, red mustard greens, leeks, swiss chard,kohlrabi, beets, sweet potatoes, celery, cherry tomatoes, radishes, carrots, onions, eggplant,zucchini and various herbs!

Woah!

In fact, I've been noticing quite number of small vegetable garden patches popping up this spring. In the Charles Village neighborhood of Baltimore, where I live, Ive seen 5 or more blocks with at least one 'font yard' garden--a small vegetable garden in a space which last year was lawn.


[image from revivevictorygarden.org.]


The famous Obama vegetable garden, ( I couldn't believe this was wikified,-- god bless Wikipedia!) would like to claim some credit as the agitator of the recent bloom of unique-space vegetable gardens, but I think it's just as likely the souring economy as anything--so come to think of it, I guess that means Bush gets the credit.

Anyway, regardless of why, it's clear that when people have more free time and less money, gardening, especially in urban environments, makes sense.

As for the Baltimore veggie gardens, from a purely economic viewpoint, using public space to grow food for impoverished people (as will be done with the Baltimore crop) is most likely inefficient.

Paying city workers to tend small, mixed plots can never be as cost effective as, for instance, buying vegetables wholesale for distribution at food banks. But while this would be cheaper, it would probably be neither encouraging sustainable or organic agriculture, nor a departure from the generic 'script' for using city space and money.

Mayor Sheila Dixon hopes that the Baltimore vegetable gardens will

"show that...an urban environment...can still maintain healthy eating."

--which is important, yes--but I think whats most notable about the project is that it shows dramatically how urban space can be put to innovative uses.

Courtyards, empty lots, parking decks could offer the city more than bland expanses of eyesore. They could offer engagement-- and purpose.


[A variation on the urban vertical farm, a "farmscraper" (image from treehugger.com.) ]


Community gardens, allotment gardens (both of which can be found in Baltimore), green roofs, green walls and even extreme implementations like guerrilla gardens (is that what these are called?) and farmscrapers are all transformative uses for urban space which make environments aesthetically pleasing (by including growing life), useful, edible and engaging--in short, livable.


[A green wall made of melon plants at the Itabashi Primary school in Tokyo. (from Wikipedia)]


In the past month I've noticed two of the tiny lawns on my block have been torn out and replaced with small vegetable gardens, and I think it's a good sign.

Small private patches, community projects and municipal projects all engage the city in different ways, on different scales, but they make the city a more interesting place to be.


-G