Comments on: High Line

By: high line, briefly - mammoth // building nothing out of something

high line, briefly - mammoth // building nothing out of something — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 19:10:18 +0000

[...] which was so focused on enabling processes and communities of curation (though, obviously, not everyone agrees, and perhaps I’ll have a different opinion once I’m able to visit). This entry was [...]

By: T. Caine

T. Caine — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:01:56 +0000

I will certainly join you in commending the High Line and its swiftly growing air of success. My trip along the elevated stitch of industrial strength was excellent. I think the design was executed tremendously, but what struck me was pausing to remember how such a great product actually came to be.

Having worked on projects with clients that wield and direct incredible wealth, it takes battles, negotiations, requests and pleas to try and keep the ideas of design and composition alive that the began the project as merely a vision. Usually, the renderings warp or lie or disappear entirely and we end up doing the best we can with what we have. But this project, carried out not by a developer but effectively a non-profit, succeeded in retaining an amazing amount of its intended goals and character. Very impressive.

I would also say that I think the High Line is certainly a park. After all, Olmstead spoke of how the industrialized economy of the city suffocated people, denying them of natural light and clean air. Olmstead’s visions of park were about removal from the busy streets and the warehouse floors. Even this raised road of steel and soil is about a unique sense of removal and readjustment. Though perhaps not trying to making the city disappear into a guise of natural surroundings, the High Line may bring us closer to a vision of how cities and nature can work towards a middle ground.

By: Blair

Blair — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:28:13 +0000

I was not familiar with the concept of flâneur but am keen to learn more. A wandering stroll through a vibrant city is a source of great enjoyment. Thank you for introducing this.

While I haven’t experienced the High Line myself, the concept of reusing antiquated infrastructure, specifically for parks and promenades, immediately brings to mind the boulevards of 19th century Europe.

Charles Mulford Robinson writes in “The Improvement of Towns and Cities“:

“[The boulevards of Paris and Vienna] illustrate well the debt to its ancient fortifications of a city that has been ‘modernized’ by this means. For it is their destruction, and the use for boulevards of the encircling strip of public territory which has been thus secured, that gives to this system much of its European vogue.”

American cities eventually copied the boulevard form for new development; but these forms lacked the history and surrounding built environment which provided the “European vogue.” It seems to me that the High Line, built atop a ruin of the city’s past, successfully reuses the space while maintaining the unique qualities of the space that make it impossible to imitate.