Abstract:
I got my idea from an article I saw in National Geographic. The article was talking about the inequity of shade in urban Los Angeles. On one street, as you go from the rich neighborhoods to the poorer neighborhoods, the amount of landscaping, most importantly, trees, reduces. This leads to increased heat island effect in the Latino and black neighborhoods with lower incomes and fewer trees. The wealthy parts of LA have 20% of the tree canopy, but less than 1% of the population.
I decided to see if I can attribute this interesting phenomenon to Colorado, more specifically Denver. I am curious if the density of trees still follows census block group incomes – more tree density should equal higher incomes. I will look into another factor, to assist with using the GIS tools and methods we are required to utilize or learn. I want to see if I can determine if there is a relationship between income and city parks – distance, how far to walk to, etc.
Analysis:
There are different things I can analyze or data I can manipulate in different ways to show a map image to support or not support my conclusion. My preliminary conclusion is because of high city standards in the Denver Metro area, this issue does not exist as is does in California. There were other factors in Los Angeles that may also contribute to the issue, which may not be present in Colorado. But some of it will, like Redlining that occurred in the past with racist lending policies. That led to racially divided and economically divided neighborhoods, and inequality with the investment in trees and maintenance of trees. We could find certain neighborhoods with lower tree densities and higher temperatures.
Conclusion:
The data and imagery did not support a relationship between income and trees. I also evaluated public parks and even public / community pools, and could find no difference in those either.