A green story of New York, from the Times:
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Believe it or not, the city streets are greener than a hundred years ago.
Many blocks that appear barren in photographs from the early 20th century are now lushly shaded by trees, The Times reporter Andy Newman discovered.
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The forces behind the change were various.
Robert Moses figures in, as usual. But a lot of the growth has been more recent; from 1995 to 2007, 120,000 trees were planted.
The transformation, however, is not entirely even.
The blogger behind I Quant New York, Ben Wellington, used city data to make a compelling “heat tree map” of the city.
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Vancouver equivalencies anyone. Comparative photos? Heat maps?
There was this a while back:
They split screen two videos, one taken on an early ride on the Expo line 27 years ago, another taken recently. You can see more trees and larger trees in many shots.
As one cab plainly see much more density is still possible in Vancouver along various SkyTrain (or Canada) Lines ! Still many 2-3 story buildings where there could be 8-28 storey buildings.
So among these latest crises there is a lot of good news in the world – besides greener trees – we can be thankful for on this first advent, as depicted here in some charts such as falling gun violence, far fewer wars, rising literacy, falling poverty, falling nuclear arsenals, falling child mortality or falling technology costs and rising internet accessibility: http://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/charts-thankful .. more trees absorb more CO2, too ..
The Capital Regional District has a tree cover map done using analysis of orthophotos. I suspect Metro Vancouver might have something similar.