Marketing with Trees
Urban ecologists are fond of reciting the benefits of trees in the big city: they reduce storm water runoff, absorb pollutants, increase real estate values, and make neighborhoods more attractive. But a recent study (pdf) shows that urban trees may have an unexpected bonus for city shopkeepers: apparently shoppers are willing to pay extra to shop near trees.
UW professor Kathleen Wolf showed photos of retail streets with and without trees to inner-city residents across the US and asked how much they would be willing to pay for a variety of items at each location. The study participants perceived shops on treed streets not only as better maintained and having a more pleasant atmosphere but also as likely having higher quality products.
These perceptions may translate into more business, because participants also said they were willing to drive farther to those shops (expanding the customer pool) and to pay more for parking. And most important for the bottom line, trees may lead to higher prices: on average, participants said they were willing to pay nearly 12% more to shop on treed streets than on treeless ones.
So add happy store owners to the benefits of maintaining trees in the city.
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Security and the City
This article in Sunday's Washington Post, penned by New America Foundation fellow Joel Kotkin, is definitely thought provoking. In the wake of terrorist attacks in London and New York, Kotkin argues that the single most important challenge facing modern cities is providing basic security to their citizens. To wit...
While modern cities are a long way from extinction, it's only by acknowledging the primacy of security -- and addressing it in the most aggressive manner -- that they will be able to survive and thrive in this new century, in which they already face the challenge of a telecommunications revolution that is undermining their traditional monopoly on information and culture, and draining their populations.
With memories of 9/11 still fresh, perhaps it's natural that people should question whether cities are really safe. Terrorism is, quite obviously, a serious problem; and central cities have proven to be ready targets.
Still, I think that the article's emphasis on terrorism per se reveals an interesting and broader cultural bias about risk. There are certain kinds of risks that our culture fears more than others. Some hazards--say, the threat of random violence, whether by ordinary criminals or by terrorists--seem intolerable, and society demands a concerted effort to put a stop to them. Others--say, traffic accidents--we generally shrug off, and accept as part of the unavoidable background of modern life.
But sometimes the "unavoidable" risks are far more hazardous, and every bit as avoidable, as the ones on which we focus our attention.
