Inspirational Manhattan project has potential in Bangkok

Making visits to our sites is one of my routines on weekends. A half-day’s drive around Bangkok gives me a chance to observe the cityscape and see how things are changing with every week that passes by. Also, when I make business trips abroad I try to notice things that have changed since my last visit, because you can interpret many things from the evolution of each city around the world by just taking in the details and what has been torn down or erected. 

Last weekend, while I was driving around the Don Muang-Chaengwattana area, as I looked out the window I felt the urge to write something about one urban relic that I have recently heard and read about in news reports. Don’t get me wrong. What I want to write about is not the Hopewell elevated system. This relic I am talking about is located in New York, and it is one place that I wish to visit next time I am in the city. It is called the High Line. 

This place in located in the Chelsea neighbourhood on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. The High Line, built in the 1930s, was the name of an elevated rail line that once brought freight cars right into factories and warehouses in this neighbourhood. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet – about 10 metres – in the air, moving dangerous trains away from traffic and people on the streets. No trains have run on the High Line since 1980, and this elevated rail line has recently been turned into an urban oasis. 

The story of this particular and special public space is a perfect mixture of emotional considerations and commercial viabilities, if I may put it that way. After its last use in 1980, the rail line remained unused and untouched until a guy named Peter Obletz purchased the elevated structure for $10 from the authorities with the intention of restoring it to rail use. However, Obletz’s ownership ended up in a losing legal battle, and he died in 1996. 

In 1999, the city’s administration decided to tear the line down, but it was saved by two guys who sat next to each other at a community meeting to discuss the future of the line in 1999. They were there to hear what all the fuss was about, and were the only two people at the meeting who disagreed with the idea of demolition. 

They began a movement called Friends of the High Line, which started with the simple aim of keeping it from being demolished, but later evolved into a quest to create a new public space in the middle of New York. The success of this project can be attributed to many factors, which I wish to point out here in the hope that we might learn something from this precedent. 

After the World Trade Centre attack in 2001, there was an increased interest in urban planning and design, with the Ground Zero design process paving the way for heightened interest in the High Line project. People felt this was one positive thing they could do. Moreover, this Friends of the High Line movement had the good fortune to be firmly planted in the world’s most sophisticated art and design community, which was very receptive to new, innovative ideas. And prior to this movement, in France, there had been a highly successful linear park called the Promenade Plantée, which provided a serious precedent for the group’s ideas for the High Line. 

The romance and nature of the movement also attracted the attention of financial backers and philanthropically minded real estate executives. They were people who were not established enough to join the city’s administration boards, but who were eager to contribute. So, the High Line was tailor-made for them. 

Finally, the movement was an undeniably commercial innovation that could make an impact on the community’s living standards, and it was a potential economic engine for this part of city. The movement struck a deal with the city and was offered $112.2 million, plus another $21.4 million from federal and state funds, while the Friends of the High Line movement agreed to come up with $19.4 million and pay the majority of operating costs once the park was open.

The end result was more than just a pretty park hovering above the streets. The neighbourhoods it runs through were already glamorous with many restaurants, bars and art galleries. But the opening of the High Line has made those areas even more of a destination. The administration even built a new museum there afterward. This was proof that building the park would bring new development to the neighbourhood, where many buildings are vacant. It all means cultural and commercial revitalisation of the vicinity, creating more jobs. 

The whole community is involved in the movement. There are now volunteers working to tend and clean the parks, annual memberships for those who want to chip in, a corporate sponsorship programme, merchandising items on sale, visitors who are willing to pay for guided tour arrangements and more. 

I am certain that people look at such an economic success story and draw inspiration from it. And I am sure that the story of how the movement turned the High Line from a rusty old disused steel structure into a successful elevated park has motivated a whole host of public officials and city planners to consider or revisit efforts to convert relics from their own pasts into potential economic engines. Actually, many cities in the US and other countries are contemplating similar projects after visiting the High Line and studying its success. 

Well, next week I am going to be visiting sites around the Don Muang area again, and those Hopewell columns will again come into view. Shall I propose that we all chip in and send our city’s administration to New York sometime this summer?