0526-A1

How the Public Values Street Trees

James F. Palmer^[1]

Abstract

Many people believe that the value of street trees is beyond reproach. However, extensive damage caused by falling trees provides reason for property owners to reconsider the value of trees in neighbourhoods. This paper reports on a survey conducted to determine the attitudes of city residents toward the vegetation in their neighborhood. The results affirm the importance of trees to urban residents. The survey was used to inform the master plan process for restoring and managing the urban forest in Syracuse, New York.

Introduction

On Labor Day, September 7, 1998, the Syracuse area was struck by a storm with very high winds that broke or destroyed thousands of trees and caused extensive property damage. In response to this disaster, the mayor called together local volunteers and "tree experts" to form the Re-Leaf Syracuse Committee. Their job was to design a tree planting and maintenance plan for the City.

Late in the summer of 1999 the USDA Forest Service funded a random sample survey that would contribute valuable information about how the public values street trees. A survey was designed and implemented to investigate residents’ thoughts about trees in Syracuse, particularly the importance of 39 tree functions and attributes. The results reported here aided urban forest planners to understand the importance placed on trees by the public throughout Syracuse’s neighborhoods (Nowak and O’Connor 2001).

Methods

Survey

The four-page questionnaire contained sections that determine how important or unimportant respondents think 39 tree characteristics are, what effect the 1998 Labor Day storm had on them, and some general demographic information. Also included were a series of 28 photographic simulations of a two-story house showing alternative plantings in the front yard. A prominent aspect of these alternatives was whether there were no trees, a single small ornamental tree, a large street tree, or two large street trees. These photographs were used these to determine what their yard looked like before the Labor Day storm, after the storm, and how they would like their yard to look in the future.

Sample

The sample for the survey was drawn from the list of 66,329 registered voters for the City of Syracuse. This list seems an appropriate population to consult about a major environmental policy question facing Syracuse, such as issues concerning the city’s public urban forest. In addition, New York State’s Agency-Based Voter Registration Program assures that the list is also broadly representative of the City’s population. Under this program, residents are given the opportunity to register to vote when they apply for many state services, such as a driver’s license.

A random sample of 502 names and addresses were drawn from the list. During March 2000 each sampled person was mailed a survey packet followed by two postcard reminders. A total of 52 questionnaires were returned by the post office as undeliverable. Of the remaining 450 names, usable responses were received from 227, or just over 50 percent.

Neighborhoods

The City of Syracuse is divided into eight sections called Tomorrow’s Neighborhoods Today or TNTs as shown in Figure 1. TNT is an experiment in grassroots democracy. Each TNT has its own council, which meets monthly. The appropriate TNT council must review all requests for support from the federally funded Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative program.

Figure 1. Syracuse’s eight Tomorrow’s Neighborhoods Today or TNTs.

The results from this study are reported for each residential TNT, because of this close association with future redevelopment planning. There were 19 respondents from the Westside, 38 from the Southside, 24 from the Valley, 44 from the Eastside, 37 from Eastwood, and 55 from the Northside. Results are not presented for the two TNTs with few residents (and therefore responses): Downtown and the Lakefront.

Results

Respondent Profile

Basic demographics for the respondents are reported in Table 1 for the six residential TNTs and Syracuse as a whole. The typical respondent is a woman in her early 50’s. She is a homeowner living with 1.7 other people. However, this average person does not capture the substantial variability among respondents, who range in age from 20 to 93 and live in households of 1 to 30 people. Many of the respondents also rent their home, and over 40 percent are men. There is no statistically significant difference among the TNTs for average age, gender, house ownership, or number of people living in the house.

There are differences among the TNTs for the remaining respondent characteristics in Table 1. The Westside’s respondents are more likely to be Black, Hispanic or American Indian. There is higher employment in technical, sales, service or labor jobs. A larger number do not have formal education beyond high school, and their incomes are lower. Respondents living in the Southside are more likely to be Black and have lower incomes. However, their education and employment mix is close to the city’s profile. In the Valley, respondents are more likely to be college graduates and not in the labor force. Their ethnic and income profile is closer to the city’s average. The Eastside has an ethnic mix similar to the City’s. They are much more likely to have graduated from college, have administrative, managerial or professional occupations, and higher incomes. Respondents living in Eastwood are whites with middle incomes. Their education and occupation profile is similar to the City’s. Northside respondents are also white with an occupation profile similar to the City’s. These respondents are more likely to have some college and there are fewer with middle incomes than in the other TNTs.

Table 1. Respondent demographics.

Table 2 shows that the respondents to this survey are long time residents of Syracuse, their neighborhood and the house in which they now live. Except for those in the Eastside, respondents have lived in the Syracuse area for approximately 40 years, in their neighborhood for 30 years and in their current house for 20 years. This residential persistence is an indication that the respondents are committed to living in Syracuse.

Table 2. Residential persistence of respondents.

1998 Labor Day Storm

On Labor Day, September 7, 1998, the Syracuse area was struck by a storm with very high winds that broke thousands of trees and damage many buildings. As Table 3 shows, all but one of the respondents remembers this storm. Most also experienced some damage from it: trees were damaged in 48% of the front yards and 68% of the side or back yards. Damage to trees was particularly severe in the Westside, Southside and Eastside TNTs. For 35% of the respondents, their house or other property was also damaged, usually by a falling tree. House damage was lightest in the Valley, Eastwood and Northside. Thirty-eight percent are concerned that trees now in their yard may cause serious damage in the next severe storm.

Even so, respondents are generally in favor of replanting the lost street trees. Sixty-two percent would like the city to plant a tree in the public right-of-way in front of their house, and 72% would be willing to assist the City with maintaining this tree.

Table 3. Percent of respondents reporting effects of the Labor Day Storm.

Characteristics of City Trees

Respondents were asked to evaluate the importance of a list of generally desirable reasons to have trees around their house or in their neighborhood. The objective of these ratings was to provide some guidance in selecting the types of trees to plant in Syracuse. The average ratings for the residential neighborhoods and the whole city are presented in Table 4. All of these characteristics were rated as important (i.e., mean ratings are less than 3.0), though some are clearly more important than others are.

Respondents throughout the city give "making air cleaner" the highest importance rating from among the benefits trees provide. Fresher and cleaner air is clearly perceived to be in a class by itself as a benefit we derive from trees.

It is followed by 11 characteristics with ratings that indicate they are very important. Several of these are benefits that help keep our environment clean: control soil erosion, reduce global warming, and provide cleaner water. Another group provides clear economic benefits: strong branching to minimize storm damage, reduce energy bills for heating and cooling, and add value to the property. Among these very important benefits are three with special social significance: provide a feeling of privacy, improve sense of neighborhood community, and make your house look more special. There are also two more personal amenity benefits: provides cool shade and breezes in the summer, and softens harsh glare from the sun.

Next are 10 characteristics that are considered important. Most of these provide personal amenities: reduce noise, colorful leaves in the fall, attract birds and wildlife, screen undesirable views, attractive flowers in the spring, pleasant smells, a place for children to play, and a tree canopy over the street. Another provides a health benefit: less pollen to reduce allergies. Blocking cold winter winds is the final characteristic in this group of important benefits.

There are two benefits that are generally less important than the preceding ones: blocking bright lights at night, and identifying property boundaries.

Table 4. How important is it to have trees with the following characteristics in your neighborhood?

Notes: Ratings range from 1= very important to 5 = very unimportant.

Respondents also evaluated a list of 15 undesirable tree characteristics that cause some people concern. Table 5 shows how important it would be to have trees that did not have these undesirable characteristics. In general, the importance ratings of these characteristics are substantially lower than for the characteristics in Table 4.

There are 6 characteristics that are judged as having important drawbacks. Four of these concern the potential of trees to do damage: breaking up the sidewalk, from a tree falling over, from falling limbs, and to the phone, cable TV and electricity wires to my house. The fifth concern is that having all the same type of trees increasing the chance they will all be wiped out by disease. Somewhat less important is a sixth drawback: that trees can provide a place for criminals to hide around the home or neighborhood.

Respondents place little or no importance to the remaining 9 drawbacks to having trees. The first in this group indicates that there is very little concern about planting non-native trees are not suited to Syracuse. Most of the rest are simple nuisances: tree litter clogging roof gutters, kids getting hurt falling out of trees, leaves and twigs creating a mess in the yard, dense shade keeping grass from growing, attracting undesirable wildlife, and creating a mess on parked cars. The remaining two characteristics could be interpreted as benefits as well as drawbacks. Trees may block outside floodlights that provide safety, but also can keep one awake at night. While trees may create conditions that are too moist, they also keep the soil from drying out so fast.

Table 5. How important is it to not have trees around your house or your neighborhood with these characteristics?

Notes: Ratings range from 1= very important to 5 = very unimportant.

Respondents were asked whether they had too few, about the right number, or to many street trees on their block. The results in Table 6 indicate that there are four TNTs where residents think there are too few street trees: Westside, Southside, Eastside and Northside. These include the areas that suffered the most damage from the Labor Day storm. The remaining two neighborhoods-Eastwood and the Valley-are comfortable with the number of street trees they have now. There is no neighborhood with a significant number of people who believe there are too many street trees.

Table 6. Satisfaction with the number of street trees on my block.

	TNT
	2	3	4	5	6	7
Too few	73.7	53.8	20.0	59.5	37.8	56.4	50.9
About the right number	26.3	46.2	80.0	38.1	59.5	40.0	47.2
Too Many	0.0	0.0	0.0	2.4	2.7	3.6	1.8

Notes: Results are percent of respondents in each TNT.

Each respondent was shown a series of photographic simulations that systematically varied the tree canopy in the front yard. There could be no trees, a small ornamental tree, a single large shade tree, or two large shade trees. Each respondent indicated which simulation looked most like their front yard before the Labor Day storm, after the storm, and how they would like it to look in 10 to 20 years. The results are reported in tables 8, 9 and 10.

Table 7 reports what the street tree canopy in front of the respondents’ homes looked like before the Labor Day storm. A quarter to a third of the respondents did not have street trees in front of their houses, though this figure raises to 45 percent in the Northside. Over half of the houses reporting from the Westside and Southside had large shade trees out front, while a third of the houses in the Valley and Eastside had a smaller tree.

Table 7. Tree canopy in the front yard before the storm.

Table 8 reports what the street tree canopy looks like now. Approximately half of the houses reported having no street trees in the Westside, Southside, Eastside and Northside. About 30 percent of the houses in the Westside, Valley, Eastside, and Eastwood have one or two large trees. Except for the Valley, there are very few houses left with two large shade trees out front.

Table 8. Tree canopy in the front yard now.

The tree canopy respondents would like in front of their homes is reported in Table 9. Half of the respondents would like one or two large shade trees in front of their house. Westside and Eastside most want these large trees. Nearly 30 percent would like a smaller tree, and 20 percent would not like any trees. Residents of Eastwood are more likely not to want any trees in front of their house.

Table 9. Tree canopy desired in the front yard in 10 or 20 years.

Conclusion

This study gives a snapshot of how a random sample of registered voters in Syracuse value their urban forest; particularly the street trees in front of their homes. Respondents evaluated the importance of 24 desirable and 15 undesirable characteristics of trees for their neighborhood. They thought the ability of trees to clean the air was the most important characteristic. Other very important characteristics contributed to improving environmental quality (e.g., control erosion, reduce global warming), provided economic benefits (e.g., reduce energy bills, increase property value), and improved overall quality of life (e.g., feeling of privacy, sense of neighborhood community). Most of the disadvantages with trees that were considered important concerned their potential for causing damage.

The 1998 Labor Day storm had a significant effect on the City’s urban forest. It damaged trees or property at 76 percent of the respondents’ homes. Almost two years later, 62 percent of respondents indicate they would like the City to plant another street tree in front of their house; 72 percent would volunteer to help maintain a tree if it were planted.

Half of the respondents thought there were too few street trees on their block, while the other half though the number was just about right. Very few respondents thought there were too many street trees. Sixty percent of respondents from the Westside and Eastside neighborhoods would like to see one or two large shade trees in front of their house. Forty to 50 percent of the respondents from the other neighborhoods would like large trees along their street. Nearly 30 percent of respondents would prefer a smaller ornamental tree in front of their house. Thirty percent of the respondents living on the Northside, 13 percent on the Eastside, and approximately 20 percent in the other neighborhoods would prefer not to have any trees in front of their house.

Bibliography

Nowak, D.J., P.R. O’Connor (compilers), 2001. Syracuse urban forest master plan: guiding the city’s forest resource into the 21^st century. Gen. Tech. Rep. NE-287. USDA For. Serv., Northeastern Res. Sta., Newton Square, PA, USA, 50 p.