Week Five: Lecture

The lecture this week, delivered by Dr Phil Crowther, was very engaging and helpful to this project. Many of the ideas that Dr Crowther talked about were very similar to ideas we had as a group, including urbangreen space/food production, alternative transport systems (including elevated walkways), communal housing and urban community hubs.

Dr Crowther also discussed the impressive urban renewal project in the New York called "The High Line." This project took a major piece of infrastructure which had previously been unused and unwanted and made it relevant to the city by transforming it into an urban park, which meanders throughout the district, across roads and through buildings. Personally, I think this project was extremely successful in creating a new identity for the meat packing district of New York and providing the area with new opportunities that came with the influx of people wanting to see and use the new attraction. The project has also had a great impact socially and culturally, as it activates the unused structure as a natural retreat within the urban setting in which it resides and acts as a destination, rather than a mere transportation route.

The old High Line was an elevated train system which meandered throughout the city, until it eventually became unused and irrelevant.

Now an urban park, the injection of greenspace offers a public attraction in the Meat packing district of New York. In our future scenario, we have imagined alot more greenspace within the city to form public attractions and community hubs.

An elevated walkway connects various places and buildings fitting comfortably into the urban scene. This is a feature of our imagined future scenario (elevated travellators/walkways). 

As the High Line does, our groups vision for greenspace within the city was that it would activate areas within the city and create destinations for the surrounding community to go by offering a retreat for various social activites in the midst of a busy city.

The idea of an elevated walkway was one similiar to what we had as a group, as it does not disrupt the ground plane below, and presents a new platform for activity above.

I also found a similar project in Paris, called the Promenade Plantée, also reinvented old railway. This structure also involves a multi-level route with some enclosed sections, as it passes between buildings and through tunnels, and some open sections with expansive views of the city.