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Urban vegetation

Cooling effects of urban trees are strongest in under-resourced neighbourhoods

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 4, page 517 (2023)Cite this article

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Lower-income neighbourhoods within cities tend to have less vegetation than higher-income neighbourhoods. Given that urban vegetation reduces heat in cities, this unequal distribution of urban vegetation has important implications for human health and well-being that should be mitigated through policy.

In the majority of cities, the magnitude of the cooling efficiency of urban trees was greater in deprived areas than in privileged ones. Further, the warming efficiency of buildings tended to be greater in privileged neighbourhoods. Although the causes of these effects are unclear, they could be attributed to energy-intensive behaviours in more advantaged areas. Importantly, the overall magnitudes of the cooling effects of urban trees (0.138 ◦C) and the warming effects of impervious surfaces (0.129 ◦C) were roughly similar, suggesting that interventions to increase urban vegetation, particularly in disadvantaged areas, are likely to mitigate future warming.

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References

Original article

  • Lin, J. et al. Socioeconomic disparities in cooling and warming efficiencies of urban vegetation and impervious surfaces. Sustain. Cities Soc. 92, 04464 (2023)

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  1. Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, Department of Biology, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Conor Gilligan

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  1. Conor Gilligan
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Correspondence to Conor Gilligan.

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Gilligan, C. Cooling effects of urban trees are strongest in under-resourced neighbourhoods. Nat Rev Earth Environ 4, 517 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-023-00475-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-023-00475-0

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