Talking of Frankfurt…and Plane Trees

Those pictures of Frankfurt’s trams reminded me that I’ve also moaned about Shanghai’s increasingly arbitrary approach to its plane trees (platanus x hispanica), especially good at creating shade oxygen while tolerating water deficiency well (i.e. they’re an environmentally very good tree). Though they seem to be reasonably well protected (though far from universally – a couple of dozen recently got down around the hideous redevelopment close to Fuxing Road and Maoming South Road) in the former French Concession and the External Roads Area (huxi), a great many have been uprooted, junked and lost in Hongkou, Tilanqiao and throughout Yangpu (where the tourists and the foreign hacks don’t go!). A great shame – as argued before, trees are history as well as buildings.

So great to see, as I posted a while back, New York consciously planting a lot of new plane trees on the lower west side (see here). As we’re mentioning cities that seem to look after their plane trees better than the authorities of Hongkou, Tilanqiao and Yangpu I’ll give a mention to Frankfurt and the well maintained stock of planes that line the southern banks of the River Main along the pathway (now there’s another idea for the authorities of Hongkou, Tilanqiao and Yangpu- why not open up the northern bank of the Yangpu to the public rather than allowing the Port of Shanghai group to control all of it just for themselves and their property investments?).