Boston’s Chinatown has one of the city’s thinnest tree canopies, leaving its dense streets with little shade during increasingly hot summers. Photo: Adilson González Morales.
Walk through Boston’s Chinatown, and it is easy to see why the neighborhood means so much to so many people. Storefronts display hanging glazed roast duck and fresh persimmons. Bakeries pull trays of egg tarts from the oven. Families fill carts with bok choy, dried mushrooms, and White Rabbit candy. And seniors gather around decades-old folding tables for an afternoon game of mahjong. In less than 150 acres, one of the city’s smallest neighborhoods holds one of its deepest senses of belonging.
For visitors like me, it can be a place to meet friends over dinner or discover a new favorite shop. For residents, it is home: a center of culture, memory, small businesses, and community.
But on a summer day, another side of Chinatown becomes impossible to miss: the heat. It radiates off pavement and brick, pours out of idling delivery trucks, and hangs between the buildings with nowhere to go. Walk down Harrison Avenue and count the street trees. You won’t need many fingers.
Fewer Trees, Hotter Streets
The numbers back up what locals and visitors witness daily. The Asian Community Development Corporation estimates that only about 5% of Chinatown is covered by tree canopy, compared with nearly 30% of Boston overall. That disparity reflects a broader pattern. Nationwide, neighborhoods of color have 33% fewer trees than predominantly white neighborhoods.
Leafier streets do far more than improve aesthetics. A well-shaded street can run as much as 10 degrees cooler on a hot day. That means families can get by with fewer fans and less air conditioning. Trees also filter pollution, absorb heavy rain before it floods streets and basements, and reduce traffic noise. Studies have even found lower rates of early childhood asthma in neighborhoods with more street trees.
Without enough shade, heat builds all day and lingers long after sunset. City modeling shows Chinatown could reach 107°F during a severe heat wave and remain above 90°F overnight, with dangerous conditions lasting up to 37 hours. But heat is only half of it: Hot, stagnant air holds exhaust from the surrounding highways close to the ground, so the hottest days are also the hardest ones to breathe.
The Costs Reach Across the Community
The heat doesn’t affect everyone equally. It falls hardest on seniors in walk-up apartments without central air, cooks working beside hot kitchen doors, and vendors spending long days on the pavement.
Heat also worsens dangerous health conditions many residents already live with – and because the same stagnant air traps highway exhaust at street level, asthma, heart disease, and other respiratory illnesses hit hardest exactly when it’s hottest. During heat waves, Boston EMS has received up to 22% more calls.
Keeping cool isn’t cheap, either. The average U.S. household will spend nearly $800 on summer cooling this year, putting a real strain on families whose budgets are already stretched thin.
Businesses feel the effects, too. When sidewalks are airless and unshaded, people don’t linger or browse, reducing the foot traffic Chinatown’s small businesses rely on.
Chinatown Residents Have Fought for Every Inch of Green Space
Chinatown began taking shape in the 1870s and remains the only historic Chinatown in New England. But from its earliest decades, entrenched institutional racism constrained how the community could grow.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 denied Chinese residents a path to citizenship. Discriminatory housing policies confined families to a few dense blocks, while public investment went elsewhere. Later, construction of the Central Artery, the Massachusetts Turnpike extension, and the expansion of Tufts Medical Center took homes, businesses, and land from the neighborhood. Space that may have held parks, trees, or housing became highways and parking lots instead.
Residents repeatedly fought back.
In the 1960s, community members rallied against urban renewal plans and stopped several projects outright. In 1993, the Coalition to Protect Parcel C defeated a proposal for an eight-story, 455-car garage in the heart of the neighborhood. The site now holds The Metropolitan, which includes mixed-income housing and space for community organizations. CLF supported the coalition by pressing state regulators to conduct a full environmental review of the proposed garage.
Residents also protected Reggie Wong Memorial Park, Chinatown’s only outdoor sports space. Though wedged between two highway ramps, the park has served the community for more than 60 years. When the state sought to redevelop it as “unused land” in 2016, residents organized, secured a long-term lease, and are now rebuilding it with shade trees, cool pavement, and a rain garden.
Other gathering places, including Mary Soo Hoo Park, One Greenway Park, and the Chinatown Backyard, also grew from decades of community advocacy led by groups like the Asian Community Development Corporation and its partners.
While these green spaces may be small, each reflects generations of work to preserve a place for the community to gather, play, and breathe.
Residents defeated plans for a massive parking garage here. Today, Parcel C is home to housing, community organizations, and green space. For more than 60 years, Reggie Wong Memorial Park has given Chinatown residents a place to play and gather between highway ramps. The Chinatown Backyard reflects decades of advocacy to preserve small spaces for residents to gather, grow, and connect.
Supporting a Cooler, Greener Chinatown
Chinatown’s canopy remains among the thinnest in Boston. That’s why residents continue to press for the investment and policy changes the neighborhood needs.
Today, CLF’s work continues to address several forces threatening Chinatown’s trees and air: pollution, aging infrastructure, and inadequate public investment.
After CLF challenged illegal bus idling by Transdev Services, the settlement redirected money from the polluter to community organizations, including Speak for the Trees, which plants and cares for trees in low-canopy neighborhoods such as Chinatown.
CLF is also working to protect the trees already standing. In 2024, a CLF street survey found methane leaking from National Grid’s aging pipelines beneath Chinatown and nine other Boston-area neighborhoods, at levels high enough to kill trees from the roots up. Across the ten neighborhoods, the survey identified more than 200 public shade trees dead or dying. CLF sued National Grid in federal court that November to force the company to fix its leaking pipes. The case is ongoing.
But holding polluters accountable is only part of the solution. CLF is also pressing state leaders to invest in communities that have long gone without green space and clean air. The Nature for All ballot question (Yes on 6) would dedicate up to $100 million a year from an existing sales tax on sporting goods to parks, trees, and open space, prioritizing communities with the fewest resources.
What a Summer Could Feel Like
I think about what a summer afternoon here could feel like ten years from now. Sidewalks wide enough for a fruit stand and a young maple. August days when the loudest sound on the block is a lion dance drum rather than cars honking. A walk down Harrison Avenue where the trees are too many to count.
Trees offer a neighborhood far more than shade and cleaner air. They give people a reason to stay outside together – and Chinatown has never needed a second invitation for that.
This community built one of the richest, most connected neighborhoods in Boston on some of its hottest, hardest ground. Chinatown has earned trees as deep-rooted as the culture it has grown here. With real investment and neighbors leading the way – as they always have – that greener future is within reach.
