It took me a few days to understand - there are no trees in central London (the City).
Sure, you have a small/big park here and there, but no random trees on side walks. It's literally a (beautiful) concrete/glass wasteland.
Note: I only walked a few of the main streets, I'm sure I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's quite noticeable compared with other cities after you realize it. And there are random trees in other areas, outside City of London.
Same shock, different direction, much nicer.
If you're in the very new, constantly rebuilt, concrete jungle that is the very small part of the city, then OK, greenery is going to be hard to spot. Particularly as they tend to nearly always choose the wrong species to plant and aftercare is an afterthought. But your assessment is factually incorrect.
See for yourself. Go to Google maps, drop a good few street view randomly around the city and you'll see that more often than not you'll see trees.
Also, I have a networks in arboriculture who work in the city and they're never short on work.
I'm not doubting your experience of unease or a concrete/glass wasteland (that's yours and not mine to question) but the facts don't support the statement of no random trees on pavements (side walks).
I live in the North, but I'm often in London.
My biggest bugbear in London is the number of developments that have a "token tree" with one lonely tree in one corner, often doing quite poorly, presumably included to check some item on a planning consent checklist.
Of course, London has many green spaces and on the whole has plenty of trees, it's just they're quite unevenly distributed.
I would say they are pretty well distributed through places where people actually tend to live. I live in a pretty average residential area in zone 3 and not only are there nice parks nearby but there are plenty of trees. London is of course massive so I can't say it's the same everywhere but most residential areas I've visited have been quite green. The City and West End (very much commercial/touristy areas) are the exception in my experience.
I'm nearly always on foot. Perhaps it's just because I'm also an arborist and I'm hard wired to see trees and avoid places that don't have them?
The token tree thing is a problem. Daisy Barrington was part of webinar on the topic as part of the Arboricultural Associations webinar series [0]. Rarely do the species planted get based on local ecology and or have a solid aftercare plan. They're normally chosen for immediate aesthetic look (Paper / Himalayan birch being the most common) rather than how they'd exist over time.
In short birch being a pioneer species is short lived (80 years), grows fast towards light and dislikes being pruned. Where as oaks, norway maple, London planes ( some of which are "climax species") etc live for longer, grow slower and respond to pruning better, support local ecology better and some don't mind the pollution of an urban environment so much.
My guess would be that the bio-diversity net gain calculations put the ecological investment off-site where it was more practical.
It's a shame though as trees and architecture can happily co-exist with each other. Living walls and well kept green areas are entirely possible.
Clicking once into Canon street towards those trees presents me with the trees. They're now in leaf and look like Sorbus intermedia "swedish whitebeam" and the key id is the margin on the leaf and the green fruits. Photo was taken July/August as prior to that they're in the flowering phase (beautiful to see btw).
When I spin the view down Canon street I see three mature trees in full leaf on pavements / sidewalks.
As I said in another reply, I'm an arborist and I'm hardwired to see trees and perhaps I subconsciously avoid areas that have none, so maybe that's bias on my part.
Elsewhere though, possible to plan continuous walks through greenish spaces. One starting at Victoria: Belgravia back streets, Hyde Park, Grosvenor Square, Marylebone High Street, Regents Park, Primrose Hill, Belsize Park, Hampstead Heath.
It gets greener as you go further out.
One of the big problems in the UK has been the rise of low maintenance gardens, replacing plants with decking concrete, gravel etc.
Here's a map of the canopy data.
Personally I have always felt that most Japanese cities are very devoid of urban greenery compared to UK towns and cities.
I've seen suburban development that would easily satisfy the three tree test from any window on any property, but they still come off as desolate wastes. The age of the trees seems to be a non trivial factor.
I agree that the public transport is not particularly great if you don’t live on the metro or train line. It’s usually faster to drive and even with one person cheaper even when paying for gasoline and parking. Public transport is ridiculously overpriced in Finland.
Even Helsinki leaves much to be desired on that front, the coverage is okay but the ticket prices are ridiculous. It’s not feasible to drive in the center though, takes forever to get anywhere.
Espoo is much more spread out, and the areas between them are all full of trees and greenery. So I very much agree with you, I've visited Espoo a few times but without a car I wouldn't want to live there.
https://jamiecurle.com/posts/trees-3-30-300
Northumberland, UK.
Yes, it's pretty green here.
Now, if we could ban street parking like Japan did [0], and perhaps take some more inspiration from Dutch traffic planning..
[0] Ideally we'd get the Gahmen out of the car parking business completely.
In other climates, like European ones, this becomes much more complex. Germany struggles even to keep its forests alive with long stretches of missing rain, higher temperatures, and new pests. Single trees in cities constantly die. Spain is in large parts a desert etc.
I really hope we find a solution/adapted plants to keep cities from heating up so much.
Eh, have a look at other tropical cities like Johor Bahru or Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur and you can see that it's very much possible to have way less greenery than Singapore.
The recent trouble with the Borkenkäfer was just a consequence of monoculture. Germany doesn't struggle with keeping forests alive: it's normal at any one time for individual trees in forests to die. Decaying dead wood is important for the ecosystems.
Even worse. It was monoculture of trees that aren't even native to the climate zone. The trees were imported from Scandinavia for their superior lumber quality, and were on edge even without the added stress from droughts and heat waves.
Big cities in Europe are usually surrounded by more rural areas in most of Europe for historical reasons (surrounding farmlands used to feed the city), lessening the need for city parks and greenery since the countryside was surrounding the city. If the city IS the country and even isolated on an island, that's of course not an option.
Another factor is also rooted in history. Like most cities in Europe, Singapore is old, though most of its growth happened in the past 60 years with proper urban planning. Europe's cities on the other hand grew over centuries without any kind of modern urban planning and the pressure of rebuilding quickly after the many devastating wars didn't help either.
Finally there's the issue of money - being one of the richest countries/cities on Earth helps tremendously with building a nice, liveable urban environment compared to some cities struggling to keep basic infrastructure running.
Now I am curious if there is a dataset for the location of every tree in every city in the world? https://overpass-turbo.eu?
Here we go, correlation does not equal causation. Simple as that. Planting 3 trees will not give you a better mental health nor will planting 10 trees. But moving in to an environment where many trees grow in front of your window will probably change a lot more than just putting trees in your view.
Having lived in Europe for many years before, this is something that's most striking about Australia. I live in a state with one of the highest population densities and yet it still feels very sparsely populated relatively speaking.
Mind you, wars and sheep did have a pretty devastating effect on the Caledonian woodland cover of the highlands. The current population of the red deer aren't helping with natural regeneration. This is one of the reasons for the case for re-introducing predator species.
But that's a complex topic with no simple answers and easy divisions.