No, Architects, You Can't Plant Trees On Top Of Skyscrapers

I feel like the problems that de Chant brings up are about as important as the problems with using a blue pen instead of a black pen. Common sense would dictate that you use plants on the buildings that are best suited to the climate and conditions. Besides that, after a very short distance, rain, sleet and snow will reach a maximum velocity anyway. I'm really surprised this actually made the 'news'.

Ditto @ thepriebe

Isnt this just the problem for science....?

When was the last time you heard science tackling a problem by saying "Well I guess it cant be done, onto the next thing!"

Excelsior!

Oh, so you mean all those trees that are on buildings right now are not happy?
Well sorry Mr De Chant, we will apologize to the trees at once and remove them from the buildings.
After all you are an expert at theoretical researcher-turned-journalism.

I would love an explanation of why, "the velocity of rain, hail, snow and sleet is greater". I can't think of why this would be the case. I think precipitation hits terminal velocity pretty quickly after falling from a cloud and after that it is pretty steady. Maybe this is related to more wind (as a sideways velocity) rather than falling downward faster, as seemed to be implied?

All sorts of trees and plants live on mountains. They'd do just fine on a tall building too.

I don't think this author knows just how windy it can be on top of Colorado mountains where trees still grow fine up to 12,000 feet. Last I heard the highest building going up soon will be 3500 feet so altitude sure isn't going to be a problem.

And wind isn't either.

Up in the mountains the winds routinely top 100 mph and often up to 150 to 175 mph so the person who wrote this article is just a media sensationalist without any scientific credibility.

If governments and society are not willing to plant more trees horizontally, I see the likely hood of making tall buildings and growing them vertically unlikely.

Second, if this also an apartment complex, I trees also come with wildlife and bugs, which is not good for people or the structure of the building.

If a person walking on the street is hit in the head by a falling branch, can I make a law suit against the owner of this building?

I see this working just fine with Artifical trees. SO YES ARCHITECTS, YOU CAN PLANT TREES ON SKYCRAPERS.

More and more of these posts sound "Troll-y". Like the work of Trolls that is. Better suited for the Gizmodo crowd.

You know PopSci, instead of writing this crap a more scientific approach would have been to call up the Architects and invite them to do a piece/interview with PopSci on their design, the challenges they encountered, what engineering solutions they came up with and how they implemented them. Did they conduct any field testing of the concepts? What were the results??

I would have found this much more fascinating than some uneducated rant about trees and wind from and 'Armchair Architect' (if there ever was one).

Hail, rain etc would go faster higher up because the air is thinner. This equals less resistance which equals a higher terminal velocity, since terminal velocity is determined by how much air friction their is. less air means less friction..... however as someone pointed out, and I agree since I live in Denver at 5280 feet. Trees grow just fine up here!