Design for Living: The lessons of New York's High Line

The only problem with the High Line is that it gets kind of busy. Photo / supplied

Auckland's pink pathway, Te Ara i Whiti, is a converted section of unused motorway. The idea came from New York's High Line, a converted section of unused elevated railway. It, in turn, came from the Promenade plantee, a tree-lined walkway in Paris, also converted from an old elevated rail line.

There may be no new ideas, but there are still many brilliant ways to reimagine old ones. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon probably come into it somewhere too.

The High Line is a garden walkway, planted all the way along its 2.3km, with stopping points to admire the city views, the planting, the itinerant performers and artists and artworks and, for much of the year, to try to squeeze yourself out of the way of the crowds. It opened in stages from 2009 and the problem it has now is that it's too good.
Which means it's ridiculously popular: eight million visitors a year, pre-Covid.

That's a problem we could do with. There are High Line-inspired parks all over America, and elsewhere. Daldy St in Auckland's Wynyard Quarter, a beautifully planted linear park with a quiet street down the middle, owes something to the idea. It's possible the linear park proposed for Victoria St does too.

But let's look at Queen St. How to restore life to an abandoned civic amenity is not a bad way to think of the challenge facing the heart of Auckland in 2022.

There are many lessons from the High Line. They called in great designers. They had lots of people living and working nearby, which is invaluable, but Queen St has that too. The larger lesson is that the High Line has drawn tens of thousands more people to live and work in the vicinity.

Also, it's an actual park. It's not, as Queen St and Victoria St are currently proposed to be, some benches and a few planters and trees, with pedestrians chancing their luck with bikes and scooters and traffic.

It's full of things to see and do. Walking the High Line is like being on a stage, caught up in the action of some enormous freestyling show and you don't want to miss a moment of it. Off one end you can visit the Hudson Yards, all steel and glass and upmarket shopping. At the other you'll find the great sprawling Chelsea Market, dedicated to tourist tat and sublimely good seafood. Lobster rolls a specialty.

The High Line: a park as well as a walkway. Photo / supplied

What's the High Line got to teach central Auckland? Well, it has not taught us that we should elevate Queen St. But why don't we work out how to turn the centre of the city into a year-round carnival in the park? All sorts of live performances, every night and every day. Thick with beautiful landscaping. A fabulous street market, selling everything, run by the local retailers who would all get to strut their stuff, every day and every night.

Why don't we put together every good idea to bring the crowds, and do them all? Make it so good, people won't want to go home. New life in the street. The thing about the High Line is, they aimed high.

Design for Living is a Canvas series about good ideas that make cities better.