TableauExcelBusiness IntelligenceMay 2025 · Alta Analytics

NYC Street Tree Equity AnalysisAlta Analytics · New York Restoration Project

Analyzed the 2015 NYC Street Tree Census with 2024 neighborhood income data in Tableau for the New York Restoration Project to surface environmental equity gaps in urban tree coverage.

Role

Business Intelligence Analyst

The problem

For the New York Restoration Project (NYRP), Alta Analytics analyzed the 2015 NYC Street Tree Census with 2024 neighborhood income data in Tableau to surface environmental equity gaps in urban tree coverage — and translate findings into planting recommendations a non-technical stakeholder audience could use.

I contributed as Business Intelligence Analyst on a five-person team spanning project management, client solutions, data engineering, BI, and visualization.

Aerial view of a tree-lined urban street intersection — Street trees are infrastructure — not decoration. Where they grow (and where they don’t) shapes who gets cooler summers and cleaner air.

Data & objectives

2015 NYC Street Tree Census (updated through 2024) — 680,825 trees with borough, status (alive / dead / stump), health condition, and trunk diameter (DBH)
2024 NYC Income Dataset — neighborhood and borough median income for equity comparisons

NYRP’s briefing asked three operational questions: How does tree distribution vary by borough? Are health outcomes different in high- vs low-income areas? Does higher median income correlate with more trees?

The dashboard

We delivered a single Tableau view that puts canopy, health, status, size, and income on one page — so stakeholders can filter by borough, health, and income category without flipping between slides.

Tableau dashboard: Urban Tree Health and Environmental Equity in NYC — Full briefing dashboard — 680,825 trees, avg. income $81,850, with interactive filters for health, borough, and income category.

Finding 1 — Canopy is uneven by borough

Queens holds 36.89% of street trees. Manhattan holds only 9.36%. Brooklyn (25.50%), Staten Island (15.31%), and the Bronx (12.93%) sit in between. That gap is the first map for planting priority — not a footnote.

Horizontal bar chart of street tree share by NYC borough — Trees across boroughs — Queens leads; Manhattan is last by a wide margin.

Finding 2 — Most trees are alive; mortality is local

Status breaks overwhelmingly toward Alive. Queens still leads on absolute alive share (35.04%), then Brooklyn (24.42%), Staten Island (14.75%), Bronx (12.23%), and Manhattan (8.93%). Dead trees and stumps are thin slices everywhere — with slightly higher mortality signals in Staten Island and Queens, pointing to targeted removal and replacement rather than a citywide crisis.

Stacked bar chart of alive, stump, and dead trees by borough — Tree status across boroughs — Alive dominates; stump and dead segments stay small.

Finding 3 — Income does not rewrite health

Splitting each borough into Rich vs Poor areas, Good health still dominates (~80–85%) on both sides. Manhattan shows a bit more Fair/Poor than the outer boroughs, and some lower-income pockets in Queens and Brooklyn tick Fair/Poor slightly higher — a maintenance signal, not a collapse of canopy quality by wealth.

Stacked bar chart of Good, Fair, and Poor tree health by borough and income group — Tree health in Rich & Poor areas — Good health dominates; income gaps are modest, not binary.

Finding 4 — Size and age skew small, with rare giants

DBH (diameter at breast height) clusters under ~50 inches citywide, with outliers stretching past 300–400 inches in every borough. Brooklyn and Queens host more of those large specimens; Manhattan’s distribution sits lower on average — consistent with denser streetscapes and younger replacements.

Box and strip plot of tree trunk diameter by borough — Tree trunk diameter (DBH) — most trees are small; a long tail of large specimens appears in every borough.

Finding 5 — Wealthier is not greener

Median income by neighborhood spans roughly $31.5k to $243k. Manhattan concentrates the darkest (highest-income) tracts; parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn sit at the light end. Pair that map with canopy volume and the equity claim breaks: high-income Manhattan is tree-scarce; mid-income Queens carries the largest share of street trees.

Choropleth map of median income across NYC neighborhoods — Income distribution across boroughs — median income from $31,533 (yellow) to $242,875 (dark green).

Bubble chart of borough median income vs mean income with tree volume encoded in bubble size — Trees & income across boroughs — Manhattan sits high on income; Queens’ larger bubble reflects canopy volume without leading on wealth.

Higher income does not mean more trees. Urban density and historical land use explain canopy better than zip-code wealth — so equitable planting should target canopy gaps, not assume affluent neighborhoods are already green.

Recommendations to NYRP

Boost planting in tree-scarce Manhattan with creative urban greening, while treating Queens’ canopy as a reference model
Targeted maintenance and community education in lower-income Queens and Brooklyn pockets with higher Fair/Poor shares
Pair new projects in low-income Bronx and Brooklyn neighborhoods with sustained cover where canopy is already strong

Impact

The deliverable was a stakeholder-ready dashboard and briefing that turns open census and income data into priority maps for environmental equity — so NYRP can allocate planting and maintenance where residents lack healthy canopy, not where income alone suggests it.

Interested in similar work? Get in touch.

Download presentation (PDF) →