Uploaded on 2017-09-26 by Stephane

Visible information: I took a tissue paper to show you how much black "stuff" -- for the lack of a better term -- was lying on my window sill. I live on a busy street in the east end of London as you can see with the road right in front of me, where many cars, trucks and double decker buses pass by. But there's also a park right next to me with quite a few trees around its perimeter. But if you look closely at the amount of black "stuff" on that tissue paper, it actually is not normal to see this for me. I've only recently moved to London from Canada and I never saw this in my home. The worst part is that where I live is far from the centre of London, where people on the most polluted roads like Oxford Circus suffer worse than me. The difference is, those on Oxford Circus merely use that road to transit elsewhere and so suffer only a little bit. Whereas for me, I live constantly next to this pollution which can greatly affect my health and my neighbourhood. I also do not have air conditioning, and as London gets hotter, we need to open our windows. But, without sounding so long-winded and petty, I have to breathe this air, hear the loud vehicles passing by (many being police/ambulance sirens), allow mosquitoes to come, and not exactly feel cooled down. I could get a fan, but that's a short-term solution. Here are two invisible information that I have derived from this: 1) To what extent do residents breathe this in? This is the invisible information we can measure in many areas of London to see if some areas breathe more than in others. 2) Do those trees at the park help to absorb the black "stuff" or at least act as a useful barrier? This invisible information can show how nature has a positive impact in modern urbanisation. I feel the 2nd invisible information can become knowledge and improve the urban liveable space, because it provides more of a possible solution compared to the 1st invisible information, which would merely overemphasise the problem without a solution. I have read that the more trees you plant, the more it can cool down a city, because it can absorb the light that would have otherwise struck the concrete road. These roads are known to absorb the energy from the sun and make the city much hotter by 4 degrees. I have also seen how mangrove forests can mitigate erosions, which makes me assume that it can absorb the black stuff more. Other benefits I believe could happen would be that it can mitigate noise pollution and encourage some biodiversity within a city. Trees are an important one to me, because it seems more like the low-hanging fruit to mitigate the problems of modern cities. It doesn't solve it entirely, but it can be one of the cheapest and more popular options to be supported by the public and the private realm.