The first time I walked the length of the High Line, this elevated railway turned park, was for a school project freshman year. My class was tasked to go and watch a dance, an interpretive dance, one of the many art forms the High Line provided. So, I went, and I watched, and I waited for the moment when the story the dancers were trying to tell would make sense. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. As I made my way down the track I noticed some things. Apart from the bodies slowly twisting and turning, there was a wall of paintings supplied by local artists, a few yards away from the overpriced frozen yogurt cart. I remember going to this so-called park, and finding it odd that the dancers didn’t dance to any music, that not a single child was playing with a ball, that there was no playground, that dogs were not being walked. All of this was a stark contrast from my local parks, which were loud and full of life, a different kind of life.
To introduce the CityLab article I chose to share, which highlights an interview with one of the High Line’s co-founders, I think it is only fitting to provide a quick history of the park. West Chelsea’s up-and-coming tourist destination was once nothing more than an idea between two Chelsea residents and friends. Robert Hammond and Joshua David were from the community and wanted to use the space to benefit the community, but Hammond was asked if that goal was accomplished and his response was “’Ultimately, we failed.[i]’” The High Line has more than 8 million visitors a year, and while nearly one-third of Chelsea’s residents are people of color, the majority of those enjoying the Highline are tourists and “overwhelmingly white[ii].” In fact, it strays so far from what is expected given the racial and ethnic composition of the area[iii] or the fact that the Highline is bookended by two affordable housing units. Hammond, who now runs the Friends of the High Line organization that built the structure and helps maintain it, and David tried to take the communities input, but only on a superficial basis of design. Hammond now regrets that choice, saying that the question he should have asked was “’What can we do for you?[iv]’” In an effort to rectify this, Hammond and his organization sponsored a set of listening sessions and asked Chelsea residents of their concerns about what they needed, which was jobs and a lower cost of living, both of which were made difficult with the High Line’s arrival. Residents had three main reasons for not visiting the High Line “They didn’t feel it was built for them; they didn’t see people who looked like them using it; and they didn’t like the park’s mulch-heavy programming.” It was a project that masqueraded as one for the people, only to be duplicitous in its purpose: it was a money-making machine estimated to bring in in over $1 billion in tax incentives in the next couple decades[v].
So why and how did a noble cause dwindle into a structure silently polarizing a community? The answer is simple and according to the CityLab article even has a name: “adaptive use”. And while this just repurposes existing spaces, city governments very rarely spearhead the projects opening them up to private investors, who set the structures up however they please creating prescribed “public” spaces, that more often than not do not serve the communities they hail from, as seen in almost 17 other adaptive use cases[vi]. That is not to say that these projects are failures, they do beautify communities and make money for the city and part of that is attracting tourists. But they act as powerful gentrifying forces that change these communities, making them unrecognizable and unwelcome to those who call it home. It ostracizes citizens from their own communities. And so finally I present you with the age-old questions: do the ends justify the means? And if projects are done in the name of the greater good, who do we get to include under that vague umbrella?
[i] Bliss, Laura, Laura Bliss, and CityLab. “The High Line’s Biggest Issue-And How Its Creators Are Learning from Their Mistakes.” CityLab. February 28, 2017. Accessed April 01, 2019. https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2017/02/the-high-lines-next-balancing-act-fair-and-affordable-development/515391/.
[ii] Reichl, Alexander J. “The High Line and the Ideal of Democratic Public Space.” Urban Geography37, no. 6 (2016): 904-25. doi:10.1080/02723638.2016.1152843.
[iii]“The High Line and the Ideal of Democratic Public Space.”
[iv] “The High Line’s Biggest Issue-And How Its Creators Are Learning from Their Mistakes.”
[v] Friends of the High Line. “The High Line by the Numbers.” The High Line Magazine, 2016.
[vi] “Projects.” High Line Network. Accessed April 03, 2019. https://network.thehighline.org/projects/.
I have always enjoyed walking through the High Line. It serves as a beautiful place to relax and get away from the bustling, intense urban city of Manhattan. However, with regards to gentrification, the High line is “a victim of its own success” as stated by Robert Hammond, co-founder of the High line. https://www.dezeen.com/2017/06/22/high-line-network-website-launch-offer-advice-avoiding-gentrification/. Hammond even launched a website to advise on how similar infrastructure projects can avoid gentrification, distraught by the gentrification and social inequality that has happened in the surrounding Chelsea neighborhoods of the High Line. He emphasizes how the cities want to create parks like the high line to increase value, but they don’t recognize the extremely negative social impact that can come with it. The High line was not created for the residents nearby. It was made for wealthy tourists and city people with disposable income and the ability to easily push out locals. Hammond stated how when they opened, they realized that the local community wasn’t coming to the park, and the main reasons were “they felt it wasn’t built for them and they didn’t see people like them there.” I find it to be extremely concerning that the locals feel this way. Thinking as if i was a local, i would be irate if a park was built and all of the sudden i felt like a foreigner in my own neighborhood. The famous age-old questions of “does the end justify the means” definitely applies here. Sacrifices sometimes need to be made for the greater good, but we need to realize no one person or ethnicity is better or more deserving then another, and everyone needs to be considered when considering infrastructure projects, or really any sort of big project that affects people and neighborhoods.
I’ve only visited the High Line twice: once on a trip with my summer camp and another with my friend and his cousin. From both experiences, if I recall correctly, everyone on the High Line was not a person of color; as you quoted from Hammond, “it was overwhelmingly white.”
Most residents can say that they feel as if they do not belong, but why? It is an open area for everyone that doesn’t bar anyone from walking along the High Line. There are set rules listed on their website (https://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/the-high-line), but it doesn’t exclude anyone from coming in AND they even have public programs (https://www.thehighline.org/public-programs/) and events (https://www.thehighline.org/events/).
You listed that the residents had reasons for not visiting the High Line: they didn’t feel like it was built for them and they didn’t see people who looked like them using it. Well, to address their first reasoning, it was built for them and their whole community, so what makes them think otherwise? Is it because of the gentrification that happened around them and all the tourists that it attracts? Jeremiah Moss wrote an article called “Disney World on Hudson” where he talks about certain businesses being forced to close and driving away the locals from their shops. In addition, he states how he felt like that the park was for the home of “a neatnik with expensive tastes” and how by being “surrounded by a phalanx of luxury clothing bags. I felt underdressed.” Well, to talk about Jeremiah’s experience and the reasons of the residents, I feel that if they simply start walking on the High Line as they are, maybe others like them will also be more likely and willing to visit the High Line. For example, women being topless in NYC wasn’t always legal, but all it took was a couple of women to change the “norm” and I feel as if the residents could make this change too.
Well aware of the dangers of unbridled vitriol against urban development, allow me to temper my response by noting that I always have a fun time when I visit Hudson Yards. The High Line experience is leisurely, upscale, and a welcome diversion from the automobile-driven, big-box world that is my Nassau County neighborhood. But my personal perspective on the High Line speaks to the frustration among Chelsea residents you pointed out. The High Line was not designed for them- it was designed as a commodity to be acquired by new residents and to be enjoyed by out-of-towners with disposable income to spend on what Kevin Loughran describes as “tamarind ice cream” and “microbrews.”
Further evidence of the High Line’s ultra-commodified and sanitized nature can be found in this article posted to the park’s website (https://www.thehighline.org/blog/2019/01/25/c-r-e-a-m-keeping-it-real-for-25-years/). It describes an art exhibit that was shown at the park this past January. Inspired by the Wu Tang Clan’s song, C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me), the art deals with mass incarceration of Blacks in America. All this sounds well and fine, but reading the article one can’t help but feel a sense of being out of place. What on earth is a gritty, in-your-face retelling of life in 1990s Staten Island doing in this park visited by an overwhelmingly white and wealthy clientele? Who is this for? The article describes in lengthy, eloquent terms how the song deals with capitalism and money as a power in the American prison system, but they seem like a bit of stretch after really listening to the song. O.D.B., a founding member of the Wu Tang Clan, famously said, “Wu Tang Clan is for the children.” But for whom was this exhibition? An intellectualized discussion of an art form born from struggle in the streets on a platform literally elevated up and away from anything remotely dirty smacks of commodification. It seems as though the Friends of the High Line put more value in taking in the issues from in front of the museum glass rather than on the ground floor.