I read about NYC's High Line unused railroad bed in the Chelsea area a few years ago. Now, the elevated track bed is on it's way to become an elevated park according to this NY Times article.
Plans for the city's first elevated park - a singular ribbon of green space stretching a mile and a half along an abandoned railroad viaduct 30 feet above the streets of Chelsea - have taken a major step forward with a favorable ruling by a federal transportation board.An elevated park, sounds pretty cool, eh?
The ruling, on Monday, essentially cleared the way for the city to begin negotiating use and development of the High Line, a weed-overgrown railroad bed that has not been used since the late 1960's and that, seen from above, looks like a painter's thick stroke of brilliant green along the gritty Lower West Side of Manhattan, between 34th Street and Gansevoort Street, in the meatpacking district.
If the plans materialize, the project would become one of only two elevated parks in the world; the other, also carved out of an abandoned railroad viaduct, is the Promenade Plantée in Paris.
The effort started back in 1999 by some neighborhood residents and now, finally, it looks like the park will become a reality. I think that this is some eggcellent news, more greenspace witin cities is always a good thing, Philly's got a ton of it in the Fairmount Park system and of course the original parks in Billy Penn's green city.
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