CB2 gained 2,141 street trees over 20 years but it depends on which block you’re on.
Three decades of NYC Parks census data show our neighborhood got greener on average and more unequal block by block. With a new street tree census underway beginning in 2025 and summers getting hotter, what the data shows about where trees went (and where they didn’t) matters more than it used to.
The gains tell two different stories. Center Boulevard had zero trees in both the 1995 and 2005 censuses. By 2015 it had 79. That is not natural canopy recovery. That is infrastructure, built alongside the new buildings. Skillman Avenue tells the opposite story: 94 trees in 1995, down to 23 by 2015. Thomson Avenue collapsed between 1995 and 2005, then partially recovered by 2015, a pattern worth understanding better.
As of 2015 there were also 345 locations across CB2 where a tree had died or been cut to a stump and not replaced. Those are not hypothetical planting spots. A tree once stood there. The soil is there. The pit is there. And NYC Parks has quietly changed how they go about replanting street trees.
Greener overall, just not evenly distributed
6,159
LIVE TREES, 1995
7,986
LIVE TREES, 2005
8,300
LIVE TREES, 2015
Trees Are Infrastructure to Beat the Heat
A 2024 study published in Scientific Reports measured air temperatures at 46 locations across a low-canopy neighborhood in Tacoma, Washington, during summer 2022. The researchers found that sidewalk air temperatures varied by 2.57 degrees Celsius across the study area, and that the probability of daytime temperatures exceeding regulated high-heat thresholds was up to five times greater in locations with no tree canopy within 10 meters compared to those with full canopy coverage. The relationship was linear. Air temperatures decreased with every unit of added tree cover, suggesting there is no threshold to hit before trees start helping.
Every tree matters.
New York City summers run hotter than Tacoma’s. The cooling gap between a tree-lined block and a bare one in LIC is likely larger than what the study’s numbers show.
Three Decades of Change, Block by Block
We win some, we lose some.
Street Trees in LIC & Hunters Point
The map above shows every street tree recorded in CB2 Queens across three census years. Click between layers and the difference is immediate: the 1995 and 2005 layers are thinner, concentrated along established corridors. The 2015 layer fills in along the waterfront as Hunters Point South began to be built out. The Dead and Stumps layer is the one worth sitting with. Those 345 points are not absences. They are locations where a tree existed, was recorded, and is now gone. The pit is still in the sidewalk. In most cases, nothing replaced it.
The table below goes further, breaking down tree counts by street corridors across all three census years. Some streets grew steadily. Others spiked in one census and vanished in the next. A handful appear in 1995 and nowhere after. The data does not explain why. It shows what happened and leaves the question of who decided, and whether anyone is tracking the gaps now, unanswered.
CB2 Queens Street Trees: 1995 – 2015
NYC Parks TreesCount! Census — click any column to sort
| Street | 1995 | 2005 | 2015 | Change |
|---|
Streets with the most change:
Take special note of the below streets, which had some disproportionate change over the last 20+ years:
- Skillman Avenue
- 94 trees in 1995, down to 23 by 2015
- a 75% drop over 20 years
- Queens Boulevard
- 132 in 1995, dropped to 65 in 2005, partially recovered to 78 by 2015
- Thomson Avenue
- 80 in 1995, collapsed to 11 in 2005, then back to 51 by 2015
- This suggests replanting of street trees across the last 20 years.
- Center Boulevard
- Zero trees in both 1995 and 2005, then 79 by 2015
- This is the new HPS waterfront development, converting a brownfield to new development.
What Comes Next
The next tree census, Trees Count 2025 was launched in July 2025. For this census cycle trees are being surveyed via LiDAR scanning and assed via machine learning rather than volunteers. No data has been published yet. The census is a two-year initiative running into 2026, with park tree surveys continuing through the end of 2026.
When that data is released, we will have our first street tree count in a decade. The question is whether the blocks that lost canopy between 1995 and 2015 gained it back, and whether the 345 dead and stump locations were replanted or are still waiting. The numbers above are the baseline. The next census will show what the last ten years actually produced.
Randy Plemel
Publisher
✉️
The founder and publisher of the Hunters Point Ledger, a newsletter covering Hunters Point South and Long Island City. He serves on Queens Community Board 2, and all views are his own.
