The High Line

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-140
Author(s):  
Tracy Nichols Busch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Natural World ◽  
First Century ◽  
Railroad Track ◽  
West Side ◽  
High Line ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
New Yorkers

An abandoned freight track on Manhattan’s West Side, considered by local businesses to be nothing more than an eyesore and an impediment to development, became the cause célèbre of New Yorkers in the early twenty-first century. Efforts to “save the High Line” resulted in one of the largest creations of public space in New York history. The 8.8 metertall High Line, which stretches 12 blocks between Ganesvoort Street and 20th Street, features both permanent and temporary art installations that inform visitors of their movement through space and its implication for the natural and constructed worlds. A post-industrial yearning for a more harmonious relationship between humans and the natural world can be detected in New Yorkers’ affection for the High Line. The elevated nature of this raised railroad track creates an ethereal and otherworldly sensation. The traffic below becomes an abstraction and pedestrians, always vulnerable on the streets, are lifted above the fray.

Neoliberal urbanism, public space, and the greening of the growth machine: New York City’s High Line park

2016 ◽  
Vol 49 (8) ◽  
pp. 1743-1761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Lang ◽  
Julia Rothenberg
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Growth Machine ◽  
Landscape Urbanism ◽  
High Line ◽  
The Social ◽  
Park Design ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Critical Literature

In post-industrial cities throughout the world abandoned railroads, demolished freeways, disused canals, and other derelict industrial ruins are being transformed into ecologically inspired and aesthetically designed leisure, consumption, and tourist spaces based upon the principles of Landscape Urbanism and ideas about sustainable park design. New York City’s High Line is one example of this growing trend. Sustainable parks like the High Line claim to provide economic, ecological, and equity benefits associated with the 3 Es of sustainability. Our research on the development of New York City’s High Line suggests that while the High Line meets the economic piece of the sustainability triad with its promise of generating growth, its success in terms of the ecological dimension of sustainability is unclear. More troubling is the High Line’s neglect of the social equity component of the discourse of sustainability. Our work brings together several key arguments in the critical literature on urban sustainability to examine how structural constraints associated with creating post-industrial ecological spaces in a climate of neoliberal urbanization play out in the paradigmatic case of the High Line.

Jazz Bubble

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale Chapman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Social Trends ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
A Site

Hailed by corporate, philanthropic, and governmental organizations as a metaphor for democratic interaction and business dynamics, contemporary jazz culture has a story to tell about the relationship between political economy and social practice in the era of neoliberal capitalism. The Jazz Bubble approaches the emergence of the neoclassical jazz aesthetic since the 1980s as a powerful, if unexpected, point of departure for a wide-ranging investigation of important social trends during this period. The emergence of financialization as a key dimension of the global economy shapes a variety of aspects of contemporary jazz culture, and jazz culture comments upon this dimension in turn. During the stateside return of Dexter Gordon in the mid-1970s, the cultural turmoil of the New York fiscal crisis served as a crucial backdrop to understanding the resonance of Gordon’s appearances in the city. The financial markets directly inform the structural upheaval that major label jazz subsidiaries must navigate in the music industry of the early twenty-first century, and they inform the disruptive impact of urban redevelopment in communities that have relied upon jazz as a site of economic vibrancy. In examining these issues, The Jazz Bubble seeks to intensify conversations surrounding music, culture, and political economy.

Book Reviews

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 287-289
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
First Century ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Baruch College ◽  
Communication And Information Technology

Andreas Grein of Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York reviews “Outside the Box: How Globalization Changed from Moving Stuff to Spreading Ideas,” by Marc Levinson. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the development of globalization in the early twenty-first century, focusing on the role of transportation, communication, and information technology in enabling firms to organize their businesses around long-distance value chains.”

scholarly journals Public space: an exhibition of photography and video

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Franchi
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
General Public ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Unrestricted Access ◽  
Private Corporations ◽  
The Public Sphere

Public Space is a photographic and video project examining the relationship between the public sphere and private corporations. The project explores various sites throughout Toronto and New York that are on private property but have been built with the intention of allowing the general public to have unrestricted access to these areas. These spaces are referred to as Privately Owned Public Space or “POPS”. The goal of the project is to question and document, through photographic and video practice, these spaces within the urban environment and to challenge others to consider whether these spaces are effective in achieving their intended use and if they are truly accessible to the general public. Loss of the public space is an ongoing issue that faces cities and developers often receive concessions to bylaw zoning requirements in exchange for incorporating POPS. This thesis project is a personal exploration of how these spaces are changing the urban environments of North American cities in the twenty first century.

The Frontiers of the European Union. By Malcolm Anderson and Eberhard Bort. New York: Palgrave, 2000. 235p. $65.00.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 875-876
Author(s):  
Erik Jones
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
European Union ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
First Century ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Geographic Boundaries ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Economic Nature

The “borderless world” is an early twenty-first century cliche, particularly in Europe. Overlapping processes of globalization and regional integration have done much over the past decades to alter the political and economic nature of geographic boundaries. As a result, the tendency is to anticipate a fundamental deterritorialization of politics and economics. However tempting, it would nevertheless be hazardous to rush to judgment. Through a series of overlapping case studies—essays, really—Malcolm Anderson and Eberhard Bort demonstrate that frontiers remain important both within the European Union (EU) and without. Politics and economics continue to be rooted in geography despite the transformations of the late twentieth century. This is true not only in practical terms but also in relation to individual and group identities. As the authors suggest, “there remains in Europe a highly developed sense of territoriality” (p. 11).

scholarly journals New York High Line as Urban Catalyst: Impact to Neighbourhood

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koichiro Aitani ◽  
Vrushali Kedar Sathaye
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Green Space ◽  
Catalytic Effect ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Public Park ◽  
The Public ◽  
High Line ◽  
Urban Renovation ◽  
The Impact

  The High Line, an abandoned elevated railway structure on Lower Manhattan's West-side, converted into the public park is among the most innovative urban renovation projects. The meatpacking district with industrial taste, transformed to one of the most fashionable areas in New York would not be realized without the impact of this unique Urban Park, the high Line. The story of how it came to be is a remarkable one: two young citizens with no prior experience in planning and development collaborated with their neighbors, elected officials, artists, local business owners, and leaders of burgeoning movements in horticulture and landscape architecture to create a park celebrated worldwide as a model for creatively designed, socially vibrant, ecologically sound public space. 5 millions of visitors are counted annually. The research will clarify the process of the High Line’s execution, its mechanism of urban transform, and impact to the neighborhood chronologically, and will discuss and theorize this urban regeneration as an outcome of catalytic effect of Urban Green Space.

The Floating Pool Lady

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann L. Buttenwieser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Projects ◽  
New Yorkers

Why on earth would anyone want to float a pool up the Atlantic coastline to bring it to rest at a pier on the New York City waterfront? This book recounts the author's triumphant adventure that started in the bayous of Louisiana and ended with a self-sustaining, floating swimming pool moored in New York Harbor. When the author decided something needed to be done to help revitalize the New York City waterfront, she reached into the city's nineteenth-century past for inspiration. The author wanted New Yorkers to reestablish their connection to their riverine surroundings and she was energized by the prospect of city youth returning to the Hudson and East rivers. What she didn't suspect was that outfitting and donating a swimming facility for free enjoyment by the public would turn into an almost-Sisyphean task. As the book describes, the author battled for years with politicians and struggled with bureaucrats to bring her “crazy” scheme to fruition. The book retells the improbable process that led to a pool named The Floating Pool Lady tying up to a pier at Barretto Point Park in the Bronx, ready for summer swimmers. Throughout, the book raises consciousness about persistent environmental issues and the challenges of developing a constituency for projects to make cities livable in the twenty-first century. The story functions as both warning and inspiration to those who dare to dream of realizing innovative public projects in the modern urban landscape.

scholarly journals The spatialization of time and history in the skyscrapers of the twenty-first century in Shanghai

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
General Concept ◽  
First Century ◽  
Chinese Modernity ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The City

AbstractThis article aims to find out to what extent the skyscrapers erected in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in Shanghai, follow the modern program promoted by the State and the city and how they play an essential role in the construction of the temporary discourse that this modernization entails. In this sense, it describes how the city seeks modernization and in what concrete way it designs a modern temporal discourse. The work finds out what type of temporal narrative expresses the concentration of these skyscrapers on the two banks of the Huangpu, that of the Bund and that of the Pudong, and finally, it analyzes the seven most representative and significant skyscrapers built in the city in recent years, in order to reveal whether they opt for tradition or modernity, globalization or the local. The work concludes that the past, present and future of Shanghai have been minimized, that its history has been shortened, that it is a liminal site, as its most outstanding skyscrapers, built on the edge of the river and on the border between past and future. For this reason, the author defends that Shanghai, by defining globalization, by being among the most active cities in the construction of skyscrapers, by building more than New York and by building increasingly technologically advanced tall towers, has the possibility to devise a peculiar Chinese modernity, or even deconstruct or give a substantial boost to the general concept of Western modernity.

Residues of a Dream World

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 358-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cataldi ◽  
David Kelley ◽  
Hans Kuzmich ◽  
Jens Maier-Rothe ◽  
Jeannine Tang
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Policy ◽  
Railway Track ◽  
Public Park ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Constitutive Function ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Public ◽  
High Line

The High Line – a public park on a repurposed railway track in New York City – first opened to the public in 2009, and has been increasingly celebrated as a model public space, and as a democratic project directed by community. Artistic and amateur photographic practices have significantly informed the High Line’s design, landscaping, publicity, urban policy, use and constellations of community. This photo-conceptual essay critically considers the constitutive function of the photographic image, as photography produces, interpellates and defines the public and public sphere of the High Line. However, these imaging practices have also taken increasingly regulated form, and endorse conservative forms of community, personhood and publicness. The new park’s imaging practices may be understood as supplementary to neoliberal forms of property accumulation, in fact diminishing public space even as they purport to represent it. Drawing from the historical avant-garde, feminist critiques of representation and anti-capitalist urban theory, the following photographic series critiques the High Line’s photographic apparatus, from within a practice of photography, and from a position within the field of contemporary art.

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