Recently, we shared a story about the expansion of New York’s High Line park, which has been a symbol of urban renewal after it successfully transformed an abandoned railway track into a lively green area — making it one of the city’s main tourist attractions.
Now the High Line’s designer, James Corner, hopes to replicate the project’s success in London after being chosen to build a new park over the Camden Highline, a disused stretch of the railway viaduct.
The designer has recently been picked as the lead architect for the structure, a linear park on three-quarters of a mile of railway viaducts running from Camden to Kings Cross. Corner believes that the urban renewal project will give London a similar boost after the trials of Covid-19 and Brexit.
“In New York, they struggled for years to get political interest and funding and it was only after 9/11 that they invested in projects like the High Line,” Corner said. “In some ways, this is a very similar project, a very positive feel-good investment to help London come out of all the negative vibes of the past couple of years.”
While there aren’t any designs available to the public yet, according to Corner, the project will involve a lot of greenery with a “palpable sense of nature — birds and butterflies” as well as places to meet and picnic.
