[hauntedheadnc]

The thrust of the gist here is that while London planetrees look nice, and do sequester carbon, provide shade, and trap pollutants, they don't support insect populations the way native trees do, and therefore don't do anything for biodiversity. Trees, like oaks, that support healthy insect populations also attract and are good for birds. London planetrees aren't good for birds. Also, Robert Moses.

This Shouldn’t Be New York City’s Most Common Tree: The London planetree is a symbol of European settlement, biodiversity collapse, and Robert Moses.

...Devoid of most critters, the London planetrees are about as sterile as trees can be. And they’re just about everywhere. You might not yet have a strong feeling about these trees, but they’re probably familiar to you. New York City is home to over 87,000 London planetrees, per the Department of Parks and Recreation’s 2015 tree census. That’s 13 percent of all the trees.
There are about 23,000 more London planes than the next most abundant species, the honeylocust.

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In a 2021 piece for Curbed about stewarding urban nature, Stephanie Foo drew motivation from a London plane that annually sequesters an estimated 10,500 tons of carbon dioxide. As Alison Kinney wrote in a 2017 New Yorker essay romanticizing the planetree, they also help filter rainwater and provide green spaces for New Yorkers.

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It was during Moses’ reign over the Department of Parks and Recreation that the planetree was popularized in the city’s parks and streets. Like expressways tearing through low-income neighborhoods, London planes are said to have been a personal favorite of that shrewd tyrant. Moses seemed to love this tree almost as much as he loathed poor New Yorkers, people of color, and public transit. When Moses consolidated the boroughs’ parks departments into a single citywide office in 1934, the new parks department got a now-familiar logo. That leaf, while officially unspecified, seems to depict a London plane.