Journal of Landscape Architecture ISSN: 1862-6033 (Print) 2164-604X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjla20 Beyond appearances: Community activism and New York City’s High Line Diane E. Davis & Stephen F. Gray To cite this article: Diane E. Davis & Stephen F. Gray (2019) Beyond appearances: Community activism and New York City’s High Line, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 14:3, 74-81, DOI: 10.1080/18626033.2019.1705586 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2019.1705586 Published online: 17 Jan 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjla20 UNDER THE SKY Beyond appearances: Community activism and New York City’s High Line Diane E. Davis and Stephen F. Gray Harvard University Graduate School of Design,1 USA Abstract Conventional views of the High Line emphasize either its formal and ecological design attributes or its role in gentrification and displacement. While accurate, such assessments mostly ignore the agency-driven, activ- ist agendas that brought the project about and that continue to propel its equity mission both locally and around the world. This essay places the High Line’s implementation and longer-term impacts in the context of citi- zen advocacy. It reveals the strategies and tactics used by local residents to undermine initial opposition by city officials and local developers; it identi- fies the ways that project supporters understood themselves to have become victims of their own success; and it details the organizational and program- matic responses undertaken by the Friends of the High Line to compensate for the project’s negative impacts, ranging from the development of inclu- sive programming to the establishment of an inter-city advocacy network for sharing ideas about how to repurpose industrial infrastructures as pub- lic spaces that reinforce equity and inclusion. Community activism / neoliberalism / gentrification / landscape urbanism / urban design 74 Journal of Landscape Architecture / 3-2019 Introduction In a neoliberal world where the built environments of cities tion on either its formal and ecological design characteristics or can reveal and readily reinforce the overwhelming power of its gentrification impacts,5 such critiques fail to recognize that capital, glitzy design projects insert themselves as key pro- the project emanated from_and continues to reinforce_com- tagonists in revved-up real estate speculation and the atten- munity activism, both locally and beyond. We further argue dant processes of gentrification. In recent years, a number of that although the citizens who led the struggle to repurpose landscape architects have entered the fray, partnering with an abandoned rail infrastructure into a public park may not ‘starchitects’ to create aesthetically dynamic and ecologically have fully appreciated the project’s larger gentrification risks, performative high-end projects. The double whammy of iconic they soon understood these and other undesirable impacts architecture combined with a landscape sensitivity to natu- following the High Line’s opening, including the possibility ral and green space interventions has generated considerable that the project’s successes might undermine their otherwise acclaim, thus bearing witness to an epistemological and meth- virtuous aim to address local community needs. With a com- odological turn in the design fields known variously as land- mitment to learning from their mistakes, the High Line’s scape urbanism or ecological urbanism.2 While a critical rea- original proponents soon refocused their mission on public lignment of urban design with nature will be essential to our programming for a more diverse citizenry. They later initi- planetary survival, the overshadowing of social considerations ated a ‘trans-local’ advocacy and knowledge-sharing network by ecological sensibilities in contemporary landscape urban- built around anticipating and confronting potential gentrifi- ism also has many adverse effects on urban communities by cation and social exclusion impacts in similar projects being greasing the wheels of market-led property development so deployed elsewhere. With the foundation of the High Line as to benefit an urban elite. Designers creating public open Network in 2017, its community activists now stand at the spaces within this new paradigm risk celebrating ecological centre of inter-city knowledge production that extends far improvements that exacerbate social and income disparities beyond the physical, temporal and geographical space that and increase private property values in their surrounds, thus the High Line currently occupies. Although not readily appar- undermining affordability and expelling long-standing res- ent to the eye of observers who visit the High Line, this iconic idents with limited financial means. project has thus produced much more than what is conven- One might in fact argue that the deployment of landscape tionally identified in landscape urbanism and gentrification interventions in the aestheticization of high-end, speculative discourses, including a growing network of insurgent com- developments has rarely paved a pathway towards broader munity activists seeking to produce ecological designs capa- publicness_in spite of a presumed professional guiding design ble of addressing social concerns. ethos that is eminently public. Even when green spaces that are integrated into private developments are open to the pub- The High Line: lic,3 if attached to upmarket or extravagant architectural pro- Urban design meets landscape urbanism jects they are unlikely to produce a more democratic public As a design intervention, the High Line is equal parts infra- sphere, and often do little to change the consumption logics structure, landscape and architecture, built around an articu- that make green space the next new speculative commodity. lated commitment to post-industrial retrofitting, urban revi- Questions thus arise about the main beneficiaries of design talization, the recuperation of public space and the allure of projects associated with landscape urbanism: how are contri- the natural environment. It is seen by many as a catalyst for butions to (or detractions from) the public sphere measured? the physical transformation and economic growth of a rela- Under what conditions might well-designed public spaces, tively run-down neighbourhood, and has been lauded for its ecologically-informed or otherwise, produce or strengthen significant role in transforming the image and identity of urban inhabitants’ ‘right to the city’,4 and at what scales will Manhattan’s entire West Side. such outcomes materialize? What other conditions_social, To many observers, the High Line is perceived as a suc- spatial, political or economic_must also exist to ensure cess. But such views have been tempered by equally pointed socially just outcomes through landscape design? criticisms. In particular, what has drawn concern is the asso- In this brief essay we address these questions with a focus ciation of the High Line’s opening with the dramatic accel- on New York City’s much celebrated_and in some corners, eration of a relatively dormant property market, which has much reviled_High Line. We suggest that although conven- benefitted private investors and fuelled the engines of spec- tional assessments of the High Line rightly focus their atten- ulation, gentrification and, ultimately, displacement. The Journal of Landscape Architecture / 3-2019 75 Beyond appearances: Community activism and New York City’s High Line Diane E. Davis and Stephen F. Gray INE L IGH H THE Figure 1 Derelict urban infrastructure in West Chelsea, OF Friends of the High Line. In: James Corner Field Oper- ations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, The High Line Foreseen: RIENDS F Unforeseen (London: Phaidon Press, 2015) answer to who benefits, of course, is mixed. One such group in 1999 by Robert Hammond and Joshua David, who several is the public sector, which has gained from the massive rev- years later founded FHL. They mobilized alongside a wide enues generated through property taxes; another is property range of advocates who were collectively motivated by a desire and business owners of local commercial establishments; a to create public spaces that would enhance the overall qual- third and much smaller group includes those employed near ity of life for residents. As a volunteer organization seeking to the High Line in the dizzying array of new retail operations. lobby New York City government to change its plans to demol- According to figures shared by the Friends of the High Line ish an abandoned rail line, Hammond and David did rely on (FHL), the civic organization that mounted the public cam- support from local donors, including wealthy New Yorkers, paign, the High Line’s economic benefits have reverberated at various stages of the project.8 Yet it is important to remem- throughout West Chelsea with spill-over effects including: ber that the idea for the High Line was set in motion by citi- ‘More than 12,000 jobs; 3,000 new residential units includ- zens, continually infused with a commitment to experimen- ing 700 designated as affordable; 1,000 hotel rooms, $5 billion tation and activism in the face of setbacks, and only realized real estate investment; and $64 million in tax revenue for the through ongoing negotiation and conflict between city offi-