Why is Canal Street such a desert?<\/p>\n
In response to complaints by local residents \u2014 full disclosure, I am such a person \u2014 about the lack of tree cover on Canal at a mayoral town hall in 2023, the Parks Department dispatched two \u201cforesters\u201d to perform an \u201con the ground\u201d survey of all opportunities for planting additional trees along the Canal Street corridor.<\/p>\n
The result: 29 new trees were planted in 2024 \u2014 eight of the spindly arbors are on the busiest portion of Canal west of Varick.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/spindly-trees.jpg\")
Want shade on Canal? Wait 30 years.Photo: Bess Adler<\/p>\n
As Carrie Bradshaw might say, and just like that, the Parks Department was done. Between Baxter and Varick street \u2014 a nearly half-mile stretch of its central business corridor \u2014 there are just seven trees.<\/p>\n
In fairness, Zito said he is desperate to do more. But on paper, the job is finished. On the ground, the reality is punishing.<\/p>\n
The stakes are high\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0Cool Neighborhoods NYC, the city\u2019s climate-resilience initiative,\u00a0more Americans die from heat waves every year than from all other extreme weather events combined\u00a0(report<\/a>). The plan calls for \u201cmassive investment\u201d and inter-agency coordination to reduce urban heat, with street trees identified as critical cooling infrastructure.<\/p>\n Street trees can lower surface temperatures by 20 to 45 degrees\u00a0and reduce peak summer air temperatures through shading and evapotranspiration<\/a>, according to the federal EPA<\/a> (yes, still!). They filter pollutants from the constant flow of diesel trucks, providing cleaner air and cooler streets.<\/p>\n Without them, Canal becomes a heat trap. City heat maps show that neighborhoods with low canopy cover suffer higher rates of heat-related illness and death.<\/p>\n And yet, on Canal Street \u2014 a corridor lined with idling trucks, dense pedestrian traffic, and relentless sun \u2014 the city has stopped planting more trees. The disconnect is immense.<\/p>\n Even the Department of Transportation has seemingly no interest in the subject. In its summary document for its\u00a0Canal Street Visioning Project\u00a0outreach (PDF<\/a>), the word \u201ctree\u201d does not even appear.<\/p>\n The Parks Department faces real obstacles wherever trees are needed, such as subway infrastructure, vaulted sidewalks, dense underground utilities, and ADA sidewalk clearance requirements among other things.<\/p>\n But on Canal Street, the city is in a unique bind, according to Zito: the corridor is marked by high truck volumes, an abundance of street vendors, and intense pedestrian traffic. Even where trees can be installed, \u201csurvival is tenuous,\u201d according to Zito as road salt damages roots, compacted soils suffocate them and passing trucks shear off branches in what foresters grimly call \u201ctruck pruning.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, the urban blight that trees mitigate \u2014 heat, pollution, traffic \u2014 conspire against their very existence on Canal Street.<\/p>\n On the street<\/p>\n The\u00a0NYC Parks Interactive Tree Map\u00a0(map<\/a>) shows all of the trees\u00a0on Canal Street, where there was almost no planting activity between 2015 (the date of the last tree census) and 2024. The map shows some trees, yes, but virtually all of them are too small to cast meaningful shade and too dispersed to form any sort of canopy.<\/p>\n The news that Canal Street is \u201cfully stocked\u201d has alarmed advocates.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the city has tapped out of tree planting on Canal, then they have to come up with solutions to create shade in other ways,\u201d said\u00a0Emily Jacobi, Manhattan organizer for Transportation Alternatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jacobi said her organization measured street-level temperatures on Canal Street and compared them to a nearby SoHo street with some tree canopy. The temps on Canal were\u00a010 degrees hotter. \u201cThe heat along Canal is at crisis levels, especially for aging New Yorkers,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Why no fix?<\/p>\n The city does a tree census for a reason \u2014 but if it doesn\u2019t take action, there\u2019s no point, experts said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe tree census isn\u2019t just about counting trees \u2014 it\u2019s about identifying where we\u2019re failing the most vulnerable communities,\u201d said\u00a0Dan Zarrilli, the special adviser on Climate and Sustainability at Columbia University. \u201cIf Canal Street is already considered \u2018done,\u2019 that shows how far behind we are. The hottest, hardest streets are where we should be leading, not giving up.\u201d<\/p>\n The desertification of Canal Street is just a microcosm of a global urban crisis of rising heat. Even small municipalities are taking creative steps to cool their streets. In Toledo, Spain, for example, the city has stretched cloth over narrow streets to function as a sun screen canopy. If a historic city with medieval streets can innovate to mitigate heat, it underscores how glaring the absence of shade is on Canal \u2014 one of New York\u2019s busiest, most modern corridors.<\/p>\n One of Canal Street’s landlords is\u00a0Vornado Realty Trust, which owns multiple properties along the corridor, most notably\u00a0334 and 304\u2013306 Canal Street (formerly Pearl Paint). The company declined to comment when asked if it will include trees or green plantings as part of its development plans.<\/p>\n Council Member Chris Marte, whose district includes Canal, has long allocated discretionary funds for tree planting and maintenance. But he got the same response from Parks: there\u2019s no more room under current constraints.<\/p>\n Marte says he\u2019s now working with local businesses and business improvement districts to implement\u00a0\u201cdaylighting\u201d so that trees or greenery can replace parking spaces \u2014 and is pressing DOT to incorporate shade into upcoming redesigns.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone wants this,\u201d Marte said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t take massive capital projects. It takes will. And it needs to happen now.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked Bill Ferns, a local resident who also involved with the Senior Advocacy Leadership Team, a volunteer group that advocates for elderly, for his thoughts about shade on Canal Street and his first reaction was deadpan: “There’s shade on Canal Street?”<\/p>\n Obviously, he was kidding \u2014\u00a0he knows there’s no shade on Canal Street. But he also pointed out the other problem: The very design and placement of the street encourages car use and throughput. And allowing so much parking brings more cars and the “intense heat” that accompanies them.<\/p>\n Worse, he added, “The sidewalks on Canal Street are so narrow for the amount of pedestrian traffic it has that any plan by the Department of Transportation to plant more trees should involving removing street parking rather than cutting into the sidewalks. Canal needs wider sidewalks.”<\/p>\n The DOT has been talking about a redesign of Canal Street since at least 2011<\/a>, but it is mired in delays. In 2023, the agency said it would<\/a> undertake an eight-month traffic review, but it was either not done or not released. A fatal crash at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge has expedited the planning, DOT claims<\/a>, but the agency’s own report on Canal and its needs doesn’t even mention trees. (Ironically, the cover of the report<\/a>, features a couple of very spindly nothingarbors, which highlights the need for change.)<\/p>\n The DOT did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canal Street is one of Manhattan\u2019s busiest corridors, but between Varick Street and the Manhattan Bridge, there is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":227917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-227916","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115206590536320555","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/woman-in-the-only-shade-crop.jpg\")
This woman found a tiny bit of shade on Canal Street between Wooster and Greene streets.Photo: Bess Adler<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/no-trees-on-canal-congested-crop.jpg\")
The awfulness of Canal Street is exacerbated by the absence of trees.Photo: Bess Adler<\/p>\n