The City of Sydney will spend $8 million planting trees over 10 years to improve air quality, provide habitat for birds and wildlife, and beautify the city.
It has been scientifically proven that green is good. More green in a city makes its inhabitants happier, helps them to work better, and keeps the city cooler.
The City of Sydney will spend $8 million over the next 10 years to increase Sydney’s street tree canopy, and lower the temperative of the city streets.
On top of that, the council's draft budget includes $2.8 million to plant 100 street trees every year over the next 10 years.
The increased spending comes on top of the council's existing $1 million per annum plan, in which 700 trees are planted every year.
The planting will be focused on streets, traffic islands, and median strips, as parks already have a sufficient amount of trees, and because of the council's commitment to open space in parks.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore said it is important to expand Sydney's inner-city tree canopy.
“We’re investing $8 million in additional funding over the next decade to improve air quality, provide habitat for birds and wildlife and beautify our city," she said.
The council has a target of increasing the urban canopy by 50 per cent by 2030, said the Lord Mayor.
“Our urban canopy has taken a battering in recent years with unprecedented development and the worst impacts of the state government’s light rail and WestConnex projects," she said. "We need to redouble our efforts.”
Sydney City has more than 31,000 street trees and 12,000 park trees. Over the past nine years, more than 9,300 street trees have been planted in the area. The city installs over 10,000 square metres of new and upgraded street gardens each year.
Recent research by global engineering and urban design company AECOM shows increasing street canopy can also boost home values by tens of thousands of dollars. AECOM analysed tree canopy coverage and five years of house price data and found that houses on streets with 10 percent more tree coverage were worth an average of $50,000 more than houses on less leafy streets in the same suburb.
Read more about green cities:
The science behind our desire to live in a leafy neighbourhood