No abstract

Research on residents’ attitudes has shown that street trees are highly valued elements of the urban environment and that their benefits far outweigh their annoyances. Much of this research was done in communities in the United States, and it is uncertain whether the findings can be generalized to other communities or countries. We compared residents’ opinions of street trees, perceptions of the benefits and annoyances trees provide, and preferences for tree size, shape, and growth rate between three communities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Overall, opinions of nearby street trees were positive and did not differ between the two UK communities and the U.S. community. Respondents in the UK communities rated annoyances as more serious, shade as less of a benefit, and physical benefits as more significant than did the residents of the U.S. community. Respondents in the two UK communities also preferred smaller trees with slower growth rates. Although these comparisons cannot be used to make inferences about differences between the entire United Kingdom and United States, they do suggest some specific ways in which community characteristics such as climate and proximity of trees to houses may contribute to variation in attitudes toward trees.

No abstract

The magnitude of induced color contrast was measured for tests whose areas, perimeter lengths, and shapes were independently varied. Test shapes were smoothly contoured, multiple-lobed figures generated from unitary Fourier shape descriptors. The shapes had from 3 to 40 lobes and were equal in area to a disk of diameter 2 deg, with perimeter lengths of 1.25, 1.75, 2.25, and 2.75 times the circumference of a 2-deg disk. The surround was a 5-deg disk. The surround was modulated sinusoidally along one of the three cardinal directions of color space around an equal-energy white of 50 cd/m2. The observer nulled the modulation induced into the test by adjusting the amplitude of real modulation in the test. The amplitude of nulling modulation was the measure of induction. The main result was that the amount of induction was similar for all tests of equal area irrespective of the shape or the length of perimeter.