# The Green View Index

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2017-02-19

boston, geneva, google-street-view-data, green-canopy, green-view-index, london, mit, new-york, senseable-city-lab, toronto, tree-canopy, uncategorized

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The [MIT Senseable City Lab](http://senseable.mit.edu/) recently developed something called the Green View Index. It is a measure of a city’s tree canopy. Below are the GVIs for Boston (18.2%), Geneva (21.4%), London (12.7%), and New York (13.5%). You may have to zoom in.

![image](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/c501d869d526ea106919c841676b438a.png)

And here is a screenshot of Toronto. We have a GVI of 19.5%.

![image](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/2c6fccc0020f8cca820908e00e40134d.png)

The index was developed by methodically scanning for trees in Google Street View panoramas. The reason street view was used – as opposed to aerial photography – was so that they could capture the human experience at street level.  

All of MIT’s interactive city maps can be found [here](http://senseable.mit.edu/treepedia/cities/toronto). It’s also interesting to pan around and see which neighborhoods are the greenest – particularly if you are familiar with the city.

One thing I noticed is that large green spaces such as Central Park, High Park, and Stanley Park don’t show up as very green. And that’s because the index uses car-based street view data. I feel like these green spaces should count for something though.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/the-green-view-index)*