How much green your street lost in ten years

How much green your street lost#

Type a street. You get the green gone in ten years (of the then-green), the green left (of the measured area), the loss band and the nearest measured park. The loss compares the green of August 2015 with August 2025; “still green” is the percentage of pixels the satellite caught green in the summers of 2024–2026.

Street

Try: Moșilor Victoriei Jilavei

Example street

How Bucharest streets compare

The middle street of the ranking lost nothing: 0.0%. 68.6% of measured streets lost nothing — the damage concentrates on the fringes and the vacant lots.

The most gnawed street is Strada Suceava: 45.0% of its green gone, across 24 addresses and 20 green-then pixels. Drumul Jilavei lost the largest area of green: 3 hectares, or 30.0% of its green at the start. And Strada Tomis kept all its green: 0.0% lost, 100.0% still green today.

The numbers compare two composites of three clear summers each: August 2015 with August 2025, exactly ten years apart. It is vegetation loss, not necessarily construction — the pixel says the green is gone, not who took it.

What the percentages mean#

Every street, park and map cell is coloured by the share of green gone in ten years, in percent; the bands are the same everywhere. It is the share of then-green that is no longer green — construction, clearing or dead green; the pixel cannot tell the cause.

Band	Loss	What it looks like
Untouched	0%	Mihai Bravu sits here, at 0.0% across 239 addresses, beside Herăstrău (0.0%) and Carol (0.0%). 68.6% of measured streets lost nothing.
Barely touched	0–2%	Tineretului (1.5%) and Șoseaua Giurgiului (1.3%), across 448 addresses, sit here.
Nibbled	2–5%	Sector 1, the least gnawed sector (2.8%), and Calea Moșilor (4.3%) sit here.
Thinned	5–10%	Sector 2, the most gnawed sector (5.5%), Parcul Liniei (7.3%) and Calea Victoriei (9.5%) sit here.
Gnawed	10–20%	Vasile Lascăr is here, at 18.2%.
Eaten away	above 20%	The most gnawed street, Strada Suceava (45.0%), sits here, beside Parcul Unirii (33.3%).

A pixel is 30 metres and mixes everything it catches: grass, tree, roof, street. That is why the page talks about the zone's green, not your door's: the loss is the share of the green around the addresses that is no longer green.

The bands are this analysis's cuts, fitted to the spread of losses: untouched is exactly 0%, “eaten away” above 20%. Every ranking shows the percentage to one decimal. Bands use unrounded percentages: 5 streets and 5 cells sit on an edge — rounded to one decimal they would fall in the next band.

How the number is made#

Each street takes its loss from around its addresses: 50-metre discs around every point in the index, valid pixels from both composites only. Green-then means a vegetation index above 0.35 in the summers-2013–2016 median, with no bare soil or building; lost means below 0.25 in the summers-2024–2026 median and below 0.30 in the latest summer, 2026 — each side backed by at least two clear summers.

The composites are three clear Landsat 8 summers each, centred on August 2015 and August 2025: exactly ten years apart. In each scene, more than 99.9% of pixels are cloud-free, and the three-summer median reduces the influence of a dry summer.

A street with under 3 addresses, under 20 valid pixels, under half of its pixels valid, or under 5 green-then pixels gets no number; rankings keep only streets with at least 20 addresses and 20 green-then pixels. 1,623 streets stayed unmeasured — they show as such, not as zero. Smârdan, for one, has no number: stone on stone.

Limits: the measure only sees losses from clearly-green land — building on already-bare ground is invisible. A ploughed or fallow vacant lot can register as vegetation loss; each pixel covers several types of surface. The 437 hectares are the area classified as loss by this method. And it is not construction on paper: the pixel says the green is gone, not who took it.

Sources#

Data

• USGS Landsat 8 Collection 2 Level-2, scenes LC08_L2SP_182029_20130813_02_T1, LC08_L2SP_182029_20150803_02_T1 and LC08_L2SP_182029_20160821_02_T1: summers 2013–2016 reflectance, the “then” median, 30 m pixels
• USGS Landsat 8 Collection 2 Level-2, scenes LC08_L2SP_182029_20240811_02_T1, LC08_L2SP_182029_20250814_02_T1 and LC08_L2SP_182029_20260801_02_T1: summers 2024–2026 reflectance, the “now” median, 30 m pixels
• OpenStreetMap: addresses and building outlines, reused from the verdele chain (ODbL)
• OpenStreetMap: park polygons and sector rings, reused without re-extraction (ODbL)

Method

• USGS Landsat Collection 2 Level-2 product sheet (DOI): optical bands, surface-reflectance scale, quality bits

Context

• Bucharest City Hall, 2010–2011 green-spaces inventory (HCGMB 159/2013 annex): 4,512.2 ha total, different definitions from the measure here

Sibling maps

• How green is your street: the same 3D map, each street's green today, from space
• Where autumn has arrived: the same 3D map, each street's cool, from space
• How hot is your street: the same 3D map, each street's heat, from space
• What you breathe on your street: Bucharest's air of today, street by street, on the same 3D map

Today's green on the same map: how green is your street, also from space.