Social Equity of Street Trees in the Pedestrian Realm

Brooks, Kerry R.; Kelley, William A.; Amiri, Solmaz

doi:10.1080/23754931.2015.1121163

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…First, we documented patterns of street‐tree composition, diversity, density, and size, as well as feeding bird composition, diversity, and density across a socioeconomic gradient. We predicted that there would be distinct street‐tree communities across the socioeconomic gradient, with higher diversity and size of trees in more affluent areas, which is in line with the luxury‐effect hypothesis (Landry and Chakraborty 2009, Kuruneri‐Chitepo and Shackleton 2011, Brooks et al 2016, Schroeter 2017). Further, we predicted that there would be distinct avian communities as well as more feeding birds in affluent areas, in part because of expected patterns of bird abundance in urban areas with higher vegetation cover (Blair 1996).…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 74%

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The importance of street trees to urban avifauna

Wood

Esaian

2020

Ecological Applications

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Street trees are public resources planted in a municipality's right-of-way and are a considerable component of urban forests throughout the world. Street trees provide numerous benefits to people. However, many metropolitan areas have a poor understanding of the value of street trees to wildlife, which presents a gap in our knowledge of conservation in urban ecosystems. Greater Los Angeles (LA) is a global city harboring one of the most diverse and extensive urban forests on the planet. The vast majority of the urban forest is nonnative in geographic origin, planted throughout LA following the influx of irrigated water in the early 1900s. In addition to its extensive urban forest, LA is home to a high diversity of birds, which utilize the metropolis throughout the annual cycle. The cover of the urban forest, and likely street trees, varies dramatically across a socioeconomic gradient. However, it is unknown how this variability influences avian communities. To understand the importance of street trees to urban avifauna, we documented foraging behavior by birds on native and nonnative street trees across a socioeconomic gradient throughout LA. Affluent communities harbored a unique composition of street trees, including denser and larger trees than lower-income communities, which in turn, attracted nearly five times the density of feeding birds. Foraging birds strongly preferred two native street-tree species as feeding substrates, the coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) and the California sycamore (Platanus racemosa), and a handful of nonnative tree species, including the Chinese elm (Ulmus parvifolia), the carrotwood (Cupaniopsis anacardioides), and the southern live oak (Quercus virginiana), in greater proportion than their availability throughout the cityscape (two to three times their availability). Eighty-three percent of streettree species (n = 108, total) were used in a lower proportion than their availability by feeding birds, and nearly all were nonnative in origin. Our findings highlight the positive influence of street trees on urban avifauna. In particular, our results suggest that improved street-tree management in lower-income communities would likely positively benefit birds. Further, our study provides support for the high value of native street-tree species and select nonnative species as important habitat for feeding birds.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 74%

“…Further, there is additional support for the luxury effect extending to street trees (Brooks et al 2016). Illustrating this, in Tampa Bay, Florida, and New York City, New York, lower‐income communities harbored less street‐tree cover than affluent areas (Landry and Chakraborty 2009, Schroeter 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of street trees to urban avifauna

Wood

Esaian

2020

Ecological Applications

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“…There is an enormous value of bats to humans because of the ecosystem services they provide such as insect predation, seed dispersal, and pollination [68–71]. Potentially, the ecosystem services provided by bats may be unequally received by people with different levels of income, as found in urban vegetation, due to the luxury effect [3, 31, 72].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The luxury effect beyond cities: bats respond to socioeconomic variation across landscapes

Parker

Kalcounis‐Rueppell

2019

BMC Ecol

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BackgroundThe luxury effect describes the positive relationship between affluence and organism diversity or activity in urban ecosystems. Driven by human activities, the luxury effect can potentially be found at a broader scale across different landscapes. Previously, the luxury effect relationship has been established within a city for two bat species, the red bat (Lasiurus borealis) and the evening bat (Nycticeius humeralis). We examined landscape-scale patterns of bat activity distribution—using empirical data for seven bat species for the luxury effect. We also identified bat-land cover associations for each species. Across North Carolina, USA, we used the mobile transect survey protocol of the North American Monitoring Program to record bat activity at 43 sites from 2015 to 2018. We collected land cover and income data at our transect locations to construct generalized linear mixed models to identify bat-land cover and bat-income relationships.ResultsWe found that across landscapes, activity of the red bat and the evening bat was positively correlated to income independent of land cover, consistent with previous single-city results. We found a negative relationship between hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus) activity and income. All seven species had specific land cover associations. Additionally, we found a positive interaction term between income and evergreen forest for the red bat and a positive interaction term between income and woody wetland for hoary bat.ConclusionsOur results demonstrated that the luxury effect is an ecological pattern that can be found at a broad spatial scale across different landscapes. We highlight the need for multi-scale ecology studies to identify the mechanism(s) underlying the luxury effect and that the luxury effect could cause inequity in how people receive the ecosystem services provided by bats.

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“…As such, public green spaces are often inequitably distributed [ 14 , 41 ], as are street trees [ 8 ]. There is generally less urban tree canopy cover in neighbourhoods with lower income, lower education and more people of colour [ 14 , 42 , 43 ].…”

Section: Factors Driving the Luxury Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social histories of cities also matter, and may explain deviations from expected patterns. While there is generally less canopy cover in neighbourhoods with more people of colour [ 14 , 42 ], regions exhibit contrasting patterns. For example, in the city centre of Detroit, Michigan, remote-sensing data showed that areas with the most increased vegetation over time were associated with the lowest household income [ 50 ].…”

Section: Factors Driving the Luxury Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodiversity and socioeconomics in the city: a review of the luxury effect

2018

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The ecological dynamics of cities are influenced not only by geophysical and biological factors, but also by aspects of human society. In cities around the world, a pattern of higher biodiversity in affluent neighbourhoods has been termed ‘the luxury effect'. The luxury effect has been found globally regarding plant diversity and canopy or vegetative cover. Fewer studies have considered the luxury effect and animals, yet it has been recognized in the distributions of birds, bats, lizards and indoor arthropods. Higher socioeconomic status correlates with higher biodiversity resulting from many interacting factors—the creation and maintenance of green space on private and public lands, the tendency of both humans and other species to favour environmentally desirable areas, while avoiding environmental burdens, as well as enduring legacy effects. The luxury effect is amplified in arid cities and as neighbourhoods age, and reduced in tropical areas. Where the luxury effect exists, benefits of urban biodiversity are unequally distributed, particularly in low-income neighbourhoods with higher minority populations. The equal distribution of biodiversity in cities, and thus the elimination of the luxury effect, is a worthy societal goal.

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Social Equity of Street Trees in the Pedestrian Realm

Cited by 12 publications

References 47 publications

The importance of street trees to urban avifauna

The importance of street trees to urban avifauna

The luxury effect beyond cities: bats respond to socioeconomic variation across landscapes

Biodiversity and socioeconomics in the city: a review of the luxury effect

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