Cool Corridors

Walking & cycling in shade across central London

LOTI + TfL · concept demo

Moving around London is essential for work, health and school. Cool Corridors pairs ten of central London's busiest journeys with continuous shade: street trees, light-coloured paving, and a sensor and mister network along each route. Drag the divider to compare today's satellite view with the corridors at maturity.

● Today · 2026

● 2045 · corridors at maturity

500 m

Imagery © Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics · 2045 layer is illustrative

Drag the round handle to swipe. Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to pan. Select a corridor on the map or in the list to fly to it.

Trees needed · 10 corridors

–new street trees–

Shade along corridors– today → – in 2045

Canopy todayAdded by new treesLondon 2050 target, 22%

–km of corridor

–planting cost

–sensor & mister nodes

Assumptions

Tree spacingDistance between trees along each kerb. 8–12 m is typical for London planes and limes. Plantable kerb shareKerb left after crossings, bus stops, loading bays and buried utilities. Mature crown widthCanopy diameter after about 20 years. Cost per tree, installedIncludes a soil-cell or mycelium-supported rooting pit in hard paving. Sensor node spacingTemperature, humidity and soil-water sensors, plus misters at junctions and termini.

Corridors · least shaded first

Journey, shade & tree-health maps

–

Route maps that show shade by time of day, built on the same canopy measurement used here, and kept current with tree-health surveys.

Tree planting & mycelium support

–

Street trees in structural soil cells inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi, linked to the parks the corridors pass. Higher-risk spots get sprinklers and misters.

Sensor & actuator network

–

Nodes report temperature, humidity and soil water, and switch misters and irrigation on during heatwaves.

Cool surfaces

–

Dark tarmac footways replaced with light, reflective pavers. Shaded surfaces in London measure about 20 °C cooler than sunlit ones.

How the numbers work

Each corridor is traced along the real street on the satellite image (Esri World Imagery, about 3 m per pixel).
Existing canopy is measured from the image: a pixel counts as tree cover when it is clearly greener than it is red or blue. This is the "today" share across a 30 m strip centred on the street.
Candidate planting sites sit 8 m either side of the centreline at your chosen spacing. Sites already under canopy, and sites over the river on bridges, are skipped.
Of the remaining sites, the plantable share is kept. Those are the new trees drawn on the 2045 side, one dot per tree.
Shade in 2045 is today's canopy plus each new tree's mature crown area, divided by the strip area. Crowns that overlap at tight spacing are only counted once.

Context

19.6%Tree canopy across Greater London (2024 report, 2022 data) 22%Mayor's canopy target for 2050 4.0%City of London canopy, the lowest borough figure –Canopy measured in this map frame (73 km²) ~20 °CSurface cooling from tree shade measured on London streets, summer 2026

Sources: London Assembly, Tree canopy cover in London · Create Streets, Too Hot to Handle (2026) · GreenBlue Urban street-tree cost analysis (about £4,900 per tree with a soil-cell pit). Corridor alignments and the 2045 layer are a design concept, not a TfL plan.