2022 Theses Master's

Evaluating the street greenery equity in New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles

Ling, Ziwei

Street greenery has long been identified as an important part of the urban landscape that has a positive impact on climate change, people’s mental and physical health, and so on. In the face of climate change, we need to pay more attention to the benefits of street trees in mitigating extreme climate events such as heatwaves and improving the health and landscape environment of communities. However, most researches on urban greenery merely use overlooking indicators, such as satellite maps, which are usually on a large scale and different from the greenness perceived by people with their eyes. Hence, this article attempts to assess the state of perceived street greenery and equity in three cities: New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles to propose practical street greenery improvement proposals at census tract level. In this paper, street canopy coverage is used to measure perceived street greenery using Google Street View (GSV). Multiple linear regression models are created to study economic, housing, and demographic aspects that may connect to street greenery in those cities. The results show that in all three cities, street canopy coverage is positively connected with median household income, suggesting that wealthier people may be exposed to more street greenery than poor people. Street greenery may also suffer as a result of urbanization. Furthermore, race composition also impacts street greenery under certain conditions. The percentage of white people in New York City is associated with more street greenery.