Urban environmental stewardship and changes in vegetative cover and building footprint in New York City neighborhoods (2000–2010)

This study explores the connections between vegetation cover change, environmental stewardship, and building footprint change in New York City neighborhoods from the years 2000 to 2010. We use a mixed-methods multidisciplinary approach to analyze spatially explicit social and ecological data. Most neighborhoods lost vegetation during the study period. Neighborhoods that gained vegetation tended to have, on average, more stewardship groups. We contextualize the ways in which stewardship groups lead to the observed decadal- and neighborhood-scale changes in urban vegetation cover. This multidisciplinary synthesis combines the strengths of quantitative data to identify patterns, and qualitative data to understand process. While we recognize the complexity of cities and the potential confounding factors, this exploratory analysis uses sound theory and data from a mixed methodological approach to show the role of urban environmental stewardship in affecting the New York City landscape. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York (outside the USA) 2014