Public reception of the highline

Public Reception

of the Highline

by Luke Espina

The Arts of New

York 101

Professor D

ara

Kiese

Mixed Beginnings• Originally, property owners of the Highline area wanted to have it torn down and develop their own arrangements in its place.• This was supported by the Giuliani Administration.• People rallied to “save the highline”, particularly the group, Friends of the Highline which lobbied extensively for it, eventually succeeding• As the idea of a park formed after the highline was saved, responses were rather apprehensive.

"They better think about kids throwing stuff down on people, too,” "I think it'

s going to

be

great, as lo

ng as they

make it so th

e kids don't

fall off,"

"Any green space that we

can get in this neighborhood is very

welcome,"(Chelsea residents, 2005)

Lots of Hype“Ever since it was unveiled in 2005, the design for this park, conceived for a strip of elevated rail tracks abandoned nearly 30 years ago, has been the favorite cause of New York’s rich and powerful. Celebrities attended fund-raisers on its deck. City officials endorsed it. Developers salivated over it, knowing it would raise land values.”

- Nicolai Ouroussoff, New York Times

The Highline garnered a stupendous amount of media attention in anticipation of its renovation and eventual opening. People were anxious. Excited. The city was putting a lot of money into this thing and it wasn’t certain whether it would all be worth it.

Right since the opening on June 9th, 2009, reviews done on the Highline park were very positive.

Initial Reviews Overwhelmingly Positive!

Periodical Reviews

“A little more than a month since its first stretch opened, the High Line is a hit, and not just with tourists but with New Yorkers who are openly relishing a place where they can reflect and relax enough to get a new perspective on Manhattan.”

- Diane Cardwell, New York Times

“And as we sauntered past the original tracks, reinstalled precisely where they were when they carried trains, it slowly dawned on me that this might be a truly rare phenomenon: a widely anticipated event actually better than its hype.”

- Karrie Jacobs, Wall St Journal

But what’s really unexpected about the park is the degree to which it alters your perspective on the city. Guiding you through a secret landscape of derelict buildings, narrow urban canyons and river views, it allows you to make entirely new visual connections between different parts of Manhattan while maintaining a remarkably intimate relationship with the surrounding streets.

- Nicolai Ouroussoff, New York Times

BUT… It’s not all rainbows and

sunshine

Although many city residents and tourists absolutely love the Highline, the Chelsea area

residents had a bittersweet mix.

TWO MAIN REASONS:

1) Tourist activity2) Gentrification

Those darn tourists!"West Chelsea is not Times Square. It is not a

tourist attraction."

Tourists (con’t)

•Due to its incredible popularity, the Highline generated a very large amount of traffic due to tourists wanting to “experience the highline”• This causes much inconvenience for the people living in the area around the Highline• “Please consider how you would feel if 3 million people a year from around the world trampled your street, your neighborhood, and your local park, and act accordingly--in the way that your morals or religion or general human consideration would dictate.”

– words on the flyer

“Since opening and despite some rain, crowds have been so dense that at busy times a line stretches down the block toward the West Side Highway.” -Julie Iovine, Wall Street Journal

Gentrification! (yay?)

•While the area around the Highline was already starting to gentrify before it became a park, the new attraction hyper accelerated the process, causing it to gentrify like crazy in a short amount of time.•This created jobs and crime rate decreased, however eventually the poorer families and small businesses began to get kicked out of their home neighborhoods.

Sources• http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/nyregion/22highline.html?ref=highlinenyc&_r=0• http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-high-line-new-york?sort_by=date_asc• http://gothamist.com/2012/05/24/high_line_neighbors_has_some_issues.php• http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2012/08/high-line-op-ed-response.html• http://travel.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/nyregion/15highline.html• http://www.thehighline.org/press/articles/062309_wsj/• http://www.thehighline.org/press/articles/061709_metropolis/• http://www.thehighline.org/press/articles/061009_nytimes/