Satisfaction with urban trees associates with tree canopy cover and tree visibility around the home

Abstract

Many world cities want to expand the number of urban trees. How this expansion occurs should consider what people expect from trees based on how they experience and perceive these trees. Therefore, we need a better understanding of how people perceptually respond to urban tree abundance. This research examined whether people’s satisfaction with urban trees and satisfaction with the management of those trees were related to objective measures of greenery such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), percent tree canopy cover, and the Viewshed Greenness Visibility Index (VGVI) for trees. We used a demographically and geographically representative survey of 223 residents in Toronto, Canada, and calculated NDVI, canopy cover, and VGVI at three neighbourhood sizes. We analysed the data using generalized linear regression. We found that canopy cover and VGVI had a positive association with satisfaction with urban trees. The associations were comparatively stronger at larger neighbourhood scales than at smaller scales. There were no statistically significant associations with NDVI or satisfaction with the management of urban trees.

Accessing Eye-level Greenness Visibility from Open-Source Street View Images: A methodological development and implementation in multi-city and multi-country contexts

“…Greenspaces play a crucial role in urban environments, offering a wide array of social, environmental, and ecological bene ts (Bain et al, 2012;Gómez-Baggethun & Barton, 2013;Ordóñez et al, 2023;Saw et al, 2015). As the urban population is projected to increase by 60% by 2050 (United Nations, 2018), sustainable development becomes imperative in addressing pressing issues, including climate change mitigation and improving the quality of life for urban residents (Savo et al, 2023).…”