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Dear New Yorkers,

Here’s a really shady tale for you: A new study offers insight into which trees will provide the best canopy for the city’s streets.

The study was led by researchers at Columbia University’s Barnard College, and tracked the speed of street tree growth over a decade-long period.

The deciding factor in speedy growing was the species: Silver lindens grew the fastest, at a rate of about half an inch each year, followed by the Japanese zelkova. The Norway maple and London planetree — the most abundant tree species in the city — were the slowest growers.

Geographically, the fastest tree growth by borough occurred in Staten Island, Queens and in The Bronx. But some of the fastest sprouting neighborhoods included Greenpoint and Flatbush in Brooklyn.

And in a bit of good news, many of the neighborhoods where trees grew at the quickest speeds, including Hunts Point and East Harlem, have residents that are most at risk of harm during extreme heat waves due to a confluence of social and environmental characteristics.

Heat across the city is not equal, and trees help cool things off by providing shade and bringing water from the soil into the air. (Reminder: Last year, THE CITY built a tracker for the heat island effect across the five boroughs so you can check your neighborhood.)

The Parks Department says it is reviewing the new study’s findings, which could help determine where it plants new trees.

Read more here about the leafy report.

Weather scoop by New York Metro Weather Wednesday’s Weather Rating: 2/10. Hot and way too humid once again, with storms likely later this afternoon. The only saving grace will be cooler air that starts filtering in after the storms tonight. Otherwise, the vibes remain extremely bad.

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Our Other Top Stories

Eighteen years ago, the people of the anarchist artist collective ABC No Rio bought a building on Rivington Street from the city for a dollar. A decade later, it was demolished, leaving the collective to gather and organize in decentralized spaces around the city. Yesterday, the famed Lower East Side anarcho-cultural center broke ground on a new building at its original address. Smoothstack, an IT company based in Virginia which employs workers and has major clients in New York City, is accused of trapping workers in their jobs, according to a lawsuit filed by the federal Department of Labor in a New York court last week. The suit alleges that the company and its co-founder have pushed employees to sign predatory paperwork that puts them on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars if they try to quit or are fired from their jobs. The company is also accused of having retaliated against whistleblowers. A meteor “about the size of a beach ball” disintegrated about 29 miles above Midtown Manhattan yesterday. People in Brooklyn and Staten Island reported hearing a loud boom, and New York and New Jersey officials scrambled to identify the cause. By the afternoon, NASA had confirmed a meteor traveling at around 34,000 miles per hour had burned up just before noon, and suggested the boom was unrelated. Later in the evening, the agency released another statement noting that it only tracks asteroids large enough to do harm to people on Earth. Fortunately for New Yorkers, this was not one of them.

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Things To Do

Here’s what’s going on around the city this week.

Wednesday, July 17: A performance of “Mama, I Want To Sing!” with the Mama Foundation for the Arts; the 1983 musical celebrates gospel and the people who make it. American Sign Language interpretation provided. Free from 11 to 12 p.m., with a second performance from 1 to 2 p.m., at the NYPL’s Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, in Manhattan. Saturday, July 20: An outdoor music concert hosted by the Queens College School of Arts. Free from 2 to 4 p.m. at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. Sunday, July 21: The weekly Brooklyn Pop-Up Market, with jewelry and goods by local artisans, from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Brooklyn Museum.

THE KICKER: Brooklyn’s new professional soccer team has made its debut, reports BK Reader.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Make it a great Wednesday.

Love,

THE CITY

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