This is the first time that the City Hall orders a census of this kind. Every tree will receive a number and be identifiable based on ten characteristics, among which position, shape, age, species and size.
According to this census, called the Capital’s Green Register, the number of trees has gone up by nearly 50% in the last two decades, from 1.1 million in 1988, to 1.7 million in 2010. The bulk of trees are to be found in Bucharest’s parks.
Bucharest’s greenest sector is sector 1, where the number of trees has gone up over 60% from 1988 until last year, when it had over 555,000 trees. In fact, all Bucharest sectors saw a rise in the number of trees except sector 2, which has 4,000 trees less than 20 years ago, according to the Green Register, conducted by Theotop, Blominfo, Geoter Proiect and Cornel&Cornel Topoexim companies.
The register, which is set to be presented Friday, also reveals that at the end of 2010 there were 0.88 trees per capita in Bucharest, while the EU recommendation is of 3 trees per capita.
The city of Sheffield in the UK, for instance, which is considered to be one of the greenest in Europe, has 5 trees per capita, according to spinsheffield.com.
‘We’re not doing that bad in terms of trees and green areas, but we tend to be too hard on ourselves,” believes Valeriu Manolache, general manager of Theotop, one of the companies in charge of the Green Record.
“Even though we fall far short of the EU’s recommendation as far as trees are concerned, at least in terms of green areas we are quite close to EU requirements,” he adds.
Bucharest averages 23.21 square meters of green area per capita, and is required by the EU to have 26 square meters by the end of 2013.