City’s Plan for Urban Forest Throws Shade on Lower Manhattan
The administration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a comprehensive plan for cultivating an “urban forest” throughout the City’s five boroughs in April, but this plan sees few opportunities for increasing tree cover in Lower Manhattan.
The “NYC Urban Forest Plan 2026” notes that the Lower Manhattan community – delineated by a jagged line joining the northern edge of Battery Park City to West Street, Vesey Street, Park Row, and the Brooklyn Bridge – ranks among the lowest any in New York for tree cover. While the citywide average is 23.4 percent, Downtown ranges between one and 14 percent.
The same document notes that while some communities contain ample space for adding up to 40 percent more tree cover, Lower Manhattan scores among the lowest, with the potential for a maximum of nine additional percentage points of canopy cover.
Two brights spots, however, are that Lower Manhattan ranked high for additions to the local tree canopy in two recent periods, adding between two and six percent of additional coverage between 2010 and 2016, and then matching this increase in the period from 2017 to 2021.
But this still leaves the local concrete jungle well short of City Hall’s goal of bumping canopy coverage for every community in the five boroughs, “to achieve 30 percent tree canopy by 2040 through protection, preservation, and planting of more trees.” (Many arborists and urban planners use the “3-30-300” rule, which stipulates that every person should be able to see at least three mature trees from their home, school, or workplace; every neighborhood should have a minimum of 30 percent tree canopy to reduce heat and improve local environments, and that all residents should live within a five-minute walk (about 300 meters) of a high-quality public park or green space.)
Separately, Spatial Equity NYC (a research project of the cycling and pedestrian safety advocacy group, Transportation Alternatives) ranks Lower Manhattan 50th out of 59 Community Boards for tree canopy cover, with just 14.9 percent of the local streetscape shaded.
“The relatively low tree canopy is not just an aesthetic issue, it’s a public health and climate issue,” Alice Blank, chair of Community Board 1 (CB1), says. “Expanding shade coverage should be treated as critical infrastructure, particularly in areas with high heat exposure and dense pedestrian use.”
Sparse greenery is a chronic complaint in Lower Manhattan. In 2024, as City officials embarked on a program to plant more than 9,000 new trees throughout the five boroughs, the administration of then-Mayor Eric Adams slated the community to get fewer than one-third of one percent of this total, or just 30 new saplings. This translated into a single new tree for every 30 acres of land within the boundaries of CB1.
In Lower Manhattan, according to the Parks Department, the existing complement of trees annually intercepts 1.7 million gallons of stormwater (enough to cover four football fields with water 12 inches deep), saves 1.3 million kilowatt hours of energy (chiefly because their cooling effect reduces the need for air conditioning), and removes 2,330 pounds of pollutants from the air.
Read the NYC Urban Forest Plan 2026, here. Learn how to care for street trees through an NYC Parks program, here. Become a Citizen Pruner with the organization Trees New York, here.