Street trees & urban investment
A funded research initiative linking NYC street trees, housing markets, and investment decisions.
Funded by NYU Climate Research Seed Award · Research prototypeThe question
How can cities use open data to understand the effects of street-tree investment on housing markets and support better urban greening decisions?
Approach
Supported by the NYU Climate Research Seed Award , this project combines NYC open data, spatial analysis, and interactive tools to examine relationships between street trees and property values. The GreenPulse prototype presents geographically weighted regression (GWR) associations at multiple geographic scales, including community districts, census block groups, and point-level statistical results. Results are observational associations, not causal estimates.
Interactive research tool: GreenPulse
Explore the prototype developed through the project: an interactive NYC map for examining how associations between street trees and property values vary across locations. Users can move between community district summaries, block-group detail, and GWR evidence. The tool is a research prototype, not an official city investment recommendation.
Presentation & team
Hanxue Wei is the lead faculty Principal Investigator (PI). She secured the project funding, recruited and supervises student researcher Archy Guo, and directs the research and tool-development agenda. Under her supervision, Archy contributed the core analysis and presented “Street Trees and Housing Markets: An Open-Data Analysis of NYC’s Urban Greening” at NYC Open Data Week 2026. Collaborators include Alexander Azan (NYU Langone Health) and Max Vilgalys (NYC Office of Management and Budget). The work was also presented at the AAG Annual Meeting.
This page describes ongoing or published scholarly work. Detailed methods, publications, and findings will be added after review.
Related research: a separate, sole-authored 2024 Seattle study examined how street-tree values vary across housing markets. Its figures should not be confused with results from the NYC GreenPulse project.
