How hot is your suburb? Search our database to find the tree cover in your area

It’s 28 degrees in the shade in Casula in western Sydney.

Shade, however, is difficult to come by. On this stretch of Box Road there are a few street trees, but they struggle to deflect the heat and offer little canopy cover.

Temperature readings show stark differences between tree-lined Leacocks Lane and the more sparsely shaded Box Road in Casula.Credit: Emily Kaine

Temperature tests conducted by The Sydney Morning Herald reveal the footpath in the open sun is a scorching 42 degrees. Around the corner on Leacocks Lane, median strip and footpath trees are better established and offer welcome shade. Here, the footpath is 31.3 degrees – more than 10 degrees cooler.

Satellite imagery tells a tale of two cities. Depending on where you live in Sydney, your proximity to tree canopy varies wildly – and temperatures can vary by up to 20 degrees.

The imagery, produced by Dutch urban advisory group Cobra Groeninzicht in partnership with RMIT University for The Sydney Morning Herald, shows Sydney’s CBD retains an impressive 30 per cent cover, reflecting Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s years-long mission to green the city.

Looking further afield to Sydney’s suburbs, the picture is mixed. Suburb-level mapping shows 29.9 per cent of Casula is covered by tree canopy; less than the NSW government’s goal of 40 per cent by 2036.

Type your suburb in the interactive below and click on the outline to view the canopy cover in your area

But Casula is relatively well served: nearby Liverpool has an average 19.6 per cent canopy cover, while Fairfield West and Fairfield Heights residents have a little more than 11 per cent shade.

Eastern suburbs hotspots include Dover Heights, which has just 4.7 per cent canopy cover; Monterey, with 8.7 per cent canopy shade; and Bright-Le-Sands, with 8.4 per cent canopy.

In the inner west, Eveleigh and Rozelle have just 10 and 11 per cent canopy cover respectively, while neighbouring Erskineville has a far healthier average 25 per cent shade.

Illustration by Matt Golding

The NSW government aims to lift overall canopy cover to 40 per cent by 2036, while the Victorian government has set a long-term target of 30 per cent canopy cover for the public realm.

These targets seem a long way off. RMIT University urban planner Dr Thami Croeser, who helped compile the data for The Sydney Morning Herald, said a lack of tree cover has social, equity and health effects on people and communities.

However, said Croeser, Sydney has maintained canopy in key growth areas better than other capital cities. Even as Parramatta continued its development trajectory as the city’s second CBD, it retained “a healthy” 30 per cent canopy cover.

“Areas with many apartments going in like Newtown and Marrickville also sit closer to 20 per cent, which still will need to expand, but it isn’t as stark a shortfall as we see in Melbourne’s infill areas,” Croeser said.

“Overall the suburbs north of Sydney Harbour show pretty majestic results, often over 60 per cent.”

Hug a tree; save your life?

Scientists last year reviewed the health records of 104,000 Australians who had experienced cardiovascular events and fatal heart attacks over 10 years.

They found that when people’s health data was cross-checked against the total green space and tree cover they lived among, a 10 per cent increase in tree canopy cover was linked with reduced risks of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and fatal or non-fatal heart attack.

Not only do trees reduce air pollution, the study found, they also improve psychiatric, respiratory and cardiovascular health, promote outdoor physical activity, and cool our cities.

While Greater Sydney comes out ahead of Melbourne in the number of trees offering crucial shade, Professor Sebastian Pfautsch, an urban management and planning expert from Western Sydney University, said the picture was more complicated in outer and growth suburbs.

The urban heat island effect, seen through infrared imaging, shows the difference in temperatures black roofs make.Credit: Sebastian Pfautsch

Pfautsch has conducted infrared studies of growth suburbs where developers were “moonscaping” natural landscapes to remove waterways, farms and vegetation for new housing developments.

Most of the houses have been built to the fence lines, with dark grey and black heat-absorbing roofs on the homes and only a handful of canopy trees in the area; building in heat retention, he said. The only relief from the heat is inside air-conditioned houses.

“This is 2025, and I find it depressing that we’re still building like that.”

“In the years when you live in your house, you pay thousands of dollars in electricity excess. It’s bizarre. It really is bizarre.”

Dr Thami Croeser said he was shocked to discover how far short most neighbourhoods fall of having enough tree cover.

Croeser sees the unequal access to nature in capital cities like Melbourne as aggravating inequalities associated with the housing crisis.

“This means that anyone trying to get relatively affordable housing, either with a new apartment or a lower-cost house far from the city, will not have much nature around them, and will swelter in heatwaves,” he said.

“We need to get much better at growing our canopy as we grow our housing stock, by designing new suburban streets better, and retrofitting existing streets much more substantially when we put in new apartments.”

According to Pfautsch, not only is it important to plant and nurture street trees – it’s crucial to plant heat and drought-resistant species that can actually form crowns to protect us from extreme heat.

The effects of tree shade on road surface temperatures, seen through infrared imaging. Credit: Sebastian Pfautsch

Projections have shown new suburbs with trees that offer 1 per cent canopy today would only provide 9 per cent canopy cover by 2040 because developers are often planting the wrong types of trees, he said.

“These kind of developments will never get to those canopy cover [targets set by state governments].

“They will never have the shade, which means you will never have the people walking outside to the playground with their kids because it’s just too hot.”

Pfautsch recommends anyone interested in planting trees in their backyard check the Which Plant Where online tool to search for suitable species.

“If you want to have a 50-year-old tree and [make sure] it’s happy in 50 years, you’ll need to check what is the climate in 50 years that it needs to deal with. So we need to ask ourselves, are the species that we’re planting now actually fit for purpose?”

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