While there are major parks along the riverfront, what partly makes up for the lack of local green space are the street trees – mature leafy deciduous trees in abundance.
It seems like all the streets in the older neighbourhoods are lined with them, almost unbroken in their canopy and coverage.
Like the street we stayed on in Palermo:
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Does BA have the best urban forest for its size in the world? It must be in the counting. (I’d welcome other nominations.) And there’s a reason.
Street trees have been a vital part of the city since the 19th century. And the person who likely gets the most credit is Carlos Thays – born Jules Charles Thays in Paris, arrived in Argentina in 1889, became infatuated with the young country and was named BA’s Director of Parks & Walkways (interesting that they specified “walkways” back in 1891.) “This position gave him significant influence over the design of the city’s open spaces, and his legacy is still strongly felt in the city’s open spaces today.”
Hey Gordon,
This might interest you: http://senseable.mit.edu/treepedia
A nice comparison, unfortunately Buenos Aires isn’t listed yet. Hopefully it will be.
Mature trees of the size indicated often break and lift the sidewalks here. Sometimes you have to wonder why so many consultants and city arbourists specify inappropriate, towering park land species in downtown sidewalks. E.g. the tulip trees on Hornby by the library, now dutifully lifting the sidewalks even at a young age – use the huge liriodendron tulipifera trees on West 10th east of Alma to reference their mature size. They will have to be cut down sooner or later. Even in some open parks the tree roots hit the glacial till (sometimes less than a metre down) and go sideways quite close to the surface.
As the result, arbourists invented structural soil – basically large rocks mixed with soil shoveled into excavated trenches to support the weight of paving above via locked together stones without compacting, and to allow tree root growth between the stones.
Later came a wonderful invention: the underground root vault.
http://www.archello.com/sites/default/files/StratavaultTreepitImages0143.jpg
This product is made from recycled plastic and creates a large void under paved surfaces into which soil is placed, and where the roots can generously expand with little or no lifting of the pavement. In essence, the vaults offer a large, continuous underground chamber for soil, and water + nutrients can be added over time through ports from the surface. With this product there is no reason why the urban forest on our streets cannot expand in canopy cover on our streets, even downtown. And landscape architects will not have to argue with the city any more over spacing trees closer than the city prefers.
Ideally, underground vaults would be standard practice in all urban environments, but that still needs to be accompanied with standards for species size in limited spaces.