Cities around the world seek to emulate N.Y.C.’s elevated park

The success of New York City’s elevated park, the High Line, has inspired a slew of projects across the United States and internationally that repurpose rusting ribbons of steel and concrete as green space in hopes of rejuvenating neighbourhoods or reclaiming overbuilt riverfronts.

Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami, London and New York’s capital of Albany are among the cities with High Line-style projects completed or in the planning stages. All seek to capture at least some of the popularity of the 23-block-long railroad viaduct in lower Manhattan planted with trees, shrubs and flowers that attracts more than five million visitors a year and has spurred $4 billion in surrounding development since it opened in 2009.

“Communities all over the country are recycling all kinds of abandoned or unneeded infrastructure,” said Ed McMahon, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C.

“We’re recycling abandoned rail lines, canals, utility corridors, parking lots, roofs of buildings, airports - even decking over freeways.”

The first section of a park on the old Reading Viaduct in Philadelphia opens next month. Chicago’s elevated Bloomingdale Trail on an abandoned rail line opened in 2015.

In Miami, the Underline will transform land beneath the Metrorail into a 10-mile-long linear park designed by James Cormer Field Operations, which developed Manhattan’s High Line.