Created from a disused elevated freight railroad line 30 feet above the city streets, Manhattan’s High Line Park represents a leap of imagination in urban planning, and an example to emulate.
High Line Park Manhattan :: View looking back at glass-paned amphitheatre and viewing deck
In Mumbai, we have become used to limiting our thinking of public open spaces to areas planned for public parks and gardens. To create a public open space out of abandoned, privately owned industrial infrastructure requires a leap of imagination.
Later this month, Manhattan — arguably Mumbai’s geographical cousin — will see the opening of the second section of a truly unusual park: the High Line. The story of this park and its transformation from an abandoned freight railway line into a unique open space is the stuff of dreams or novels.
The High Line Park, Manhattan:: Map
Located on Manhattan’s West Side, the High Line runs from Gansevoort Street through the city’s largest industrial zone, the Meatpacking District, to West 34th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. From 1847 to the 1930’s, freight trains ran at road level here. This collision of rail and road traffic caused so many accidents that 10th Avenue was nicknamed “Death Avenue”. In response, in the 1930’s, the rail lines were raised 30 feet above the road. The railway went through industrial blocks and sheds at that height. This was part of a massive public-private infrastructure project that also created additional space at Riverside Park, and cost about $2 billion dollars at today’s prices. The High Line ran till 1980 and when, a few years later, in 1999, the now historic structure was proposed to be demolished, a non-profit group called Friends of the High Line proposed a partnership with the local authority (the City of New York) to create, preserve and maintain the structure as an elevated park.
A planning framework for the High Line’s preservation and reuse was prepared in 2002, when the City Council adopted a resolution supporting the project. This was followed by a study with a financial rationale: tax revenue generation by the public space was projected to exceed construction cost (an urban design concept we quite simply overlook in our planning). A year later, a design competition was held: 720 teams from 36 countries entered. Two years later, the design teams — landscape architecture, horticulture, engineering, security, maintenance, public art, architecture and more — were selected. The designs were showcased at MoMA. In November 2005, the City took over ownership of the High Line from its private owner. The owner donated the High Line to the city, and the city signed an agreement for its continued re-use; and this is what effectively ensures the High Line Park’s future. Construction began in 2006, and the first section, from Ganesvoort Street to West 20th Street opened three years later in June 2009. Later this month, Section 2, up to West 30th Street, will open to the public in what the New York Times describes as the summer’s biggest sequel. The city and the state have both contributed funds.
A potted history like this over-simplifies the mammoth struggle that went before. Writing in the New York Magazine, Adam Sternbergh says that “If New York were in the practice of erecting statues to living people, you could make a good case that Joshua David and Robert Hammond should be cast in bronze tomorrow.” The two survived ridicule and widespread criticism, and, with help from the socialiate Amanda Burden, overcame it, rallying others to the cause. The idea was, in fact, not new: it had been proposed in 1981 by the architect Steven Holl, but it took David, Hammond and others like them to bring it to the level of a city initiative.
The High Line Park, Manhattan:: Sunset along the park
On a warm summer evening, the lighting tilting in from the West, the park was a revelation. You climb up two flights of stairs at Ganesvoort Street and, arriving at the starting decks, are immediately transported into another world. As my young nephew said, the city looks entirely different from here. This is not just a walkway. There are large areas of carefully planted green, a watered sidewalk, beautifully designed benches (some on wheels set on the old rail lines) and seating areas under groves. The park follows the rail lines, even through buildings that now provide spaces for exhibitions and performances. At one point is a jaw dropping amphitheatre, positioned over a road underpass with a huge glass pane overlooking the street. To the west, one sees the piers and dockyards and Frank Gehry’s IAC building.
The planting design here is deceptive. There are no ornate flowerbeds or weird topiary designs. A usable lawn is proposed only in Section 2. The planting is, on the contrary, inspired by the seemingly jumbled natural growth that surrounds disused railways tracks. Over 200 species of perennials, grasses, shrubs and trees have been selected. These are hardy, durable plants, with an emphasis on the indigenous, chosen for their seasonal colour variations. The landscape consciously mirrors a wildness, reduced in scale. The design is by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro in consultation with the influential Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf.
This isn’t a park for bustle and mad physical activity. It’s a slow park, for sauntering, pausing often, unwinding. As one of its architects said, it’s a place for doing nothing, just being in the moment, in the city, but just enough above it to provide sufficient detachment.
The High Line Park is an astonishing achievement, most notably for the sharing of a vision by citizens, city officials and private corporations, in doing something for the betterment of the city and for its people. It marries a present, and pressing, public need with the preservation of industrial architecture. A park like this lends context to the otherwise amorphous interpretation of the right to life as including the right to a clean environment. Perhaps the real fundamental right is the right to a public open space. The High Line park also forces us to ask what form we want our cities to take and reaffirms the importance of urban environmental concerns. We should learn from this.
Mayor Bloomberg’s assertion that a previous eyesore “has become one of the most innovative and successful parks anywhere in the world” may not be entirely true. Paris has had an elevated park since 1988 when 3-mile long Promenade Plantée was constructed on a railway viaduct. And it is also expensive: the first section cost $152 million dollars, of which $44 million was raised by the non-profit. Maintenance costs are to come partly from a tax on local businesses. While other cities like Chicago, Jersey City and Philadelphia claim to be inspired by it, it is unclear whether this level of financial commitment can be achieved from public funds. Certainly in a city like Mumbai it would need massive support from corporations and from the State. But if a state is considering putting up statues of leaders at points west in the general direction of Oman, perhaps it is not to much to suggest that that money might be better used elsewhere. Corporations need to support initiatives like this too: the bettering of an urban environment is directly linked to the nature and quality of business. Second-rate cities have third-rate businesses.
The High Line is also a movement of a different kind. It is an instance of citizen-driven planning that re-defines part of an urban form, and its importance lies in the fact that it reflects city planners’ acknowledgement of the aspirations, desires and needs of citizens. An initiative like this in Mumabi would force, too, a reassessment of individual roles in relation to the city. In Mumbai, we only see mammoth private residences. The High Line demonstrates the powerful result of a conflation of factors and players: a profit-making corporation ceding an asset to the city, and the city, the state and the people partnering to create something out of an industrial element. This is a form of reclamation, one that we are not used to seeing, one we would do well to embrace: a reclamation of history and architecture rather than their effacement, and a resulting dedication of public open space to the city.
Perhaps a park like this isn’t relevant in areas where individual homes have their own yards or open spaces. Perhaps the Hudson River Park might be a better example, one that lends itself better to translation in, for instance, the Port Trust lands. But in a city like New York, as in Mumbai, where land is scarce, a park in the sky is an idea for tomorrow.
High Line Park, Manhattan: The entrance at Ganesvoort Street Click for slideshow
Writing in the New York Review of Books, Martin Filler says the High Line’s second installment is even better.
The High Line Park, Manhattan:: The Second Installment Photo by Iwan Baan/Courtesy Friends of the High Line
Rarely do additions to works of architecture or engineering by the same designers who created the originals attract as much comment as the initial installments. Thus there was some question as to just how much excitement could be generated by the debut this June of the second segment of the High Line, which runs between West 20th and West 30th streets. …more
Update 2 December 2011
Martin Filler in the NYRB again reviewing High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky by Joshua David and Robert Hammond:
Rarely do additions to works of architecture or engineering by the same designers who created the originals attract as much comment as the initial installments. Thus there was some question as to just how much excitement could be generated by the debut this June of the second segment of the High Line, the innovative park created atop the long-derelict New York Central Railroad freight trestle that runs along Manhattan’s far West Side between the Meatpacking District and Midtown.
Upon its inauguration, in 2009, the first portion of this landscaped thirty-foot-high promenade—which extends from Gansevoort to West 20th Streets, or roughly one third of the scheme’s entire projected length, with the second part now open between West 20th and West 30th Streets—was greeted with universal praise, and rightly so. Seldom in modern city planning has a single work of urban design brought together and synthesized so many current concerns, including historic preservation, adaptive reuse of obsolete infrastructure, green urbanism, and private-sector funding and stewardship of civic amenities.
Walking The High Line
In Mumbai, we have become used to limiting our thinking of public open spaces to areas planned for public parks and gardens. To create a public open space out of abandoned, privately owned industrial infrastructure requires a leap of imagination.
