Reclaimed Space, NYC (The High Line)

In the summer of 2007, my wife and I stopped over in NYC for three days on the way back from our honeymoon. We walked out to the edge of Chelsea to see Frank Gehry's IAC Building:



It was hot and my feet were killing me (we had just spent a month in Spain where it was even hotter and where we walked even more), and I don't even particularly care for Gehry's work (though Sydney Pollack's film, Sketches of Frank Gehry, made me a little less critical); but, on the way back toward midtown, I saw a wall full of posters for Friends of The High Line. As an abandoned elevated rail line, nature had reclaimed this space, a la Alan Weisman's book, The World Without Us.


A nonprofit organization had formed with the vision of converting this space into a public promenade; they had garnered much support from the public and from design professionals. You can check out their website here to read more about the details and progress they have made.

And though our lot hasn't been here long enough for nature to have reclaimed it, I think we could just skip over that part and make it ours now.