Cautionary Tale and Attempt at Redemption.
When Robert Hammond first conceived of turning a disused elevated railway on Manhattan’s West Side into a high-design “linear park” …He and co-founder Joshua David didn’t really think about what the High Line could do to the neighborhood…”
Now they are asking themselves different questions.
“…the stakes are much higher than visitor statistics. The network of project leaders is tackling a long overdue conversation about how to improve neglected neighborhoods, without pushing away the very people they intend to serve.”
“…Locals aren’t the ones overloading the park, nor are locals all benefiting from its economic windfall. The High Line is bookended by two large public housing projects; nearly one third of residents in its neighborhood, Chelsea, are people of color. Yet anyone who’s ever strolled among the High Line’s native plants and cold-brew vendors knows its foot traffic is, as a recent City University of New York study found, “overwhelmingly white.” And most visitors are tourists, not locals….
“We were from the community. We wanted to do it for the neighborhood,” says Hammond,…executive director of Friends of the High Line….”Ultimately, we failed.”
“Instead of asking what the design should look like, I wish we’d asked, ‘What can we do for you?’” says Hammond. “Because people have bigger problems than design.”
“…findings led to the several new initiatives. In 2012, FHL launched a suite of paid jobs-training programs aimed at local teenagers, focused on environmental stewardship, arts programming, and educating younger kids. The organization also started to partner with the Elliot-Chelsea and Fulton Houses, the two public housing projects, to develop their programming schedule.”
Mistakes get made, but the real challenge is not to defend them. Kudos to Hammond and the community.