I read on Mashable today about some folks who look at the relationship between trees and money. They’ve found that Google Maps can reveal definitive lines of income inequality. Says Mashable:
Tim De Chant discovered this phenomenon last month. De Chant is a journalist and ecologist who writes about population density and urbanization on his blog, Per Square Mile. He came across a March 2008 study that showed a correlation between tree density and income in urban areas. According to the authors of the study, who surveyed 210 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000 people, when the population’s average income increases in a given area, the demand for trees also increases. Therefore, wealthier neighborhoods often have denser tree cover than poorer areas, making the tree a luxurious commodity.
The Mashable story shows screen grabs from Google wherein you can clearly see poor and wealthy neighborhoods in various cities, just by the tree canopy. So I figured I’d have a look at three Dallas neighborhoods from space. Have a look at the tree coverage of Highland Park, West Plano, and South Dallas:
What to make of these images? It seems clear that Highland Park, the wealthiest of the three neighborhoods, has the most trees. But South Dallas (the poorest) looks to be leafier than West Plano (middle income). (These screen grabs were all taken from the same elevation, as it were.)
Here’s my theory: back in the day, North Texas used to be nearly all grassland. Most of the trees you see here were planted. Highland Park and South Dallas are older than West Plano, so they planted their trees first, and they’ve had more time to mature. Until someone comes up with a better theory, that’s the one I’m sticking with.