Trees and Diversity

Take a drive, or walk, around this beautiful city and notice the many varieties of trees. In just one city block, you might observe pines, palms, fruit and oak trees. Lower your eyes and you will discover the neighborhood's diversity doesn't stop there. In one East Oakland neighborhood, I noticed five different tree varieties and drove by an equal number of neighbors working in their front yards - Chinese, Hispanic, African-American, White and Vietnamese. Now, this was a hood in the flatlands. As I drove further up the road, where the incline changes as gradually as the scenery, I observed something else.

Cross MacArthur Boulevard and wind up into the more elevated sections of Oakland (not quite "the hills", but close enough), and you will observe equally lesser varieties of trees and diminishing ethnic diversity.

Travel back across the 580 and out into the city's crime-ridden sections, and you will observe less trees all together and more concentrated single ethnic groups.

What does this mean? I don't know for sure. It's just an observation. Which came first, the variety of trees, or variety of people; the singularity of an ethnic group or the scarcity of trees; the singularity of trees or the singularity of an ethnic group?

As I said, it's just an observation, and one I continue to ponder. More importantly, I wonder, what might happen if we planted more trees in West Oakland and the deep East, and mixed in a variety above the 580? Would we see any change in crime; and change in economic disparity, any change in city pride?

I just wonder.