Alice Murphy MA Landscape Architecture Manchester Metropolitan University Dissertation “Can the reprogramming of derelict urban transport infrastructure act as a medium for regeneration in existing urban systems?�
Can the reprogramming of derelict urban transport infrastructure act as a medium for regeneration in existing urban systems? Introduction ‘One key to a successful and livable large city is its transportation network’ (Gobster, 2011:39).
Within the typical post-industrial city exists both functioning and redundant transportation networks. Contrary to the pivotal role these now redundant infrastructures once played in the formation and economic prosperity of a city, now decommissioned they are often ‘seen as unsightly reminders of a bygone era and ripe for demolition.’ (Kolb, 2009:29). Although not performing original functions can redundant infrastructures still contribute to the ‘success’ and ‘livability’ of a city? Furthermore what potentials can these disused landscapes offer now that their primary function has dissipated, how will these potentials support regeneration and what part do they play in the future change of the city?
Early 20th century transport infrastructure, particularly that of the railway, which served as conduits for capitalist circulation, enabled commodities to be moved through cities (Foster, 2010). Now redundant, the waste landscapes or voids left behind are now being considered for re-functioning. Current trends for the repurposing of these transport infrastructures advocate the creation of public urban space, harnessing the industrial characteristic to create popular cultural landscapes. Their locations within cities such as London, Paris, Berlin and New York, as well as others, have the potential to offer substantiate open green space in an otherwise densely populated urban fabric. Attached to these developments is the prospect of the regeneration, as they attract new investments and economic growth to the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Exploring a different approach is the discourse of landscape urbanism. ‘Paradoxical and complex, Landscape Urbanism involves understanding the full mix of ingredients that comprise a rich urban ecology.’ (Corner, 2003:58) Promoting the practice of considering
landscape as the primary medium of city making, Landscape Urbanism has the capabilities of understanding and reforming the decentralised post industrial urban form as an interconnected whole, with its leftover void spaces, including those of redundant transport infrastructures (Shane, 2006). ‘Cities are being reshaped and urban landscapes are rapidly transformed to address economic globalization, to handle intercity competition and to meet the requirements of post modernity.’ (Gospodini, 2006: 312) The way in which infrastructure, which ‘occupies a crucial place in ensuring the quality of life and effective functioning of an urbanised society’ (Ward, 1989:136) fits into this economic globalization is key on the agenda within the discourse of Landscape Urbanism.
Chapter 1: How infrastructure influenced the morphology of the industrial and post-industrial city. ‘From its deindustrializing inner core to its sprawling periphery to the transitorial landscapes in-between, the city is the manifestation of industrial processes’ (Berger, 2006: 199).
The western Industrial city, a product of capitalism born out of the industrial revolution, became interspersed with infrastructure built to transport its products and labourers. The roads, rail and water lines constructed to carry goods and workmen became a crucial element of the efficient manufacturing city, part of the profitable productive landscape built by the wealthy upper classes, whose factories these infrastructures were built to serve (Lynch, 1989). Transport infrastructure, especially that of the railway, was critical for the efficient movement of raw materials and manufactured goods from port to factory and back again, to then be exported.
As transport infrastructure developed, it enabled the mobility of people and changed the structure of the city. People, particularly the working classes, no longer found it necessary to live where they worked. New and lower cost modes of mobility made the places of work and home functionally separate (Shannon & Smets, 2010). The effect of developments in transport infrastructure is summed up in the following statement, ‘Infrastructure builds cities but it also dissolves cities as it creates centrifugal possibilities.’ (Keil & Young, 2010: 91) In the United Kingdom two waves of suburbanisation have resulted, challenging the ‘compact city’ urban form. Firstly in the late 19th century, as garden cities and picturesque suburbs and secondly in the postwar decades, which included the development of New Towns such as Milton Keynes and Warrington. These expansions resulted in a diffused urbanity and a declining inner city, both of which ‘have been made feasible and promoted by improvements in transport infrastructure.’ (Gospodini, 2006: 327) Post 1920, economic growth, and mass production including that of automobiles, led to a rise in consumerism, that by the decades of the 1950’s, 60s and 70s had refashioned lifestyles and the form of cities (Filton & Hammond, 2003). This refashioning included the construction of extensive
highway networks that not only transported people but commodities also. Thus resulting in the decline of the railway as a primary method of goods transportation as they became more easily transported by lorry.
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01 [01 (Burtynsky, 2004) Image demonstrating the level of mass production]
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[02 (Burtynsky, 2003) & 03 (Burtynsky, 2009) Modern highway infrastructures present in many American cities]
As industry has decentralised it has left many post-industrial voids in its wake, Berger terms these voids as ‘drosscapes.’ Included in these drosscapes are the redundant transport infrastructures that supplied the now redundant industries. The creation of drosscapes and also inner city deindustrialisation can be linked to the change in transport infrastructure. ‘Drosscape is created by the deindustrialization of older city areas (the city core) and the rapid urbanization of newer city areas (the periphery), which are both catalyzed by the drastic decrease in transportation costs (for both goods and people) over the past century.’ (Berger, 2006: 200) As technologies have developed and the nature and character of industry has changed there has been a shift to the peripheries of towns and cities where land is cheaper, where there is space for expansion and transport is more cost effective, or alternatively the industry has moved abroad to the emerging markets of China or India. ‘Leaving waste landscape inside the city core while creating it anew on the periphery.’ (Berger, 2006: 205)
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[04 (Burtynsky, 2008), 05 (Burtynsky, 2008),06 (Burtynsky, 2008) Images of de-industrialised Detroit showing the type of waste landscape left behind]
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Transport infrastructure has therefore had a defining role in the morphology of the city, acting as a catalyst for change and determining the structure of many of todays post-industrial urban landscapes. Can transport infrastructure once again act as a catalyst for change, promoting regeneration and revitalisation within the city of today and the future, and more specifically can the reprogramming of redundant transport infrastructures play a significant part in this? If waste landscape is accepted as a necessary by-product of industry what strategies for repurposing should be implemented to maximize this waste and make it productive and functional whilst encouraging further regeneration to its surrounds?
Chapter 2: Why repurpose and how should it be done? ‘There in lies the overriding strategy, taking a once useless site and transforming it into an economic machine for the entire neighborhood.’ (Lund, 2013:15)
‘With over half the world’s population living in urbanized areas, cities like London, Shanghai, New York City and Los Angeles burst at the seams with an average of 10,000 to 30,000 people per square mile.’ (Aquino, 2012:36) Space in these densely populated cities is therefore an important commodity, one that a great number of functions are fighting for. ‘Cities have extraordinary urban densities that require both strategic and sensitive systems for resource use, transit, food production, water quality, and waste management.’ (Aquino, 2012:36) The pre mentioned voids or drosscapes left in the wake of a deindustrializing city core are therefore considered prime development land and despite being labeled as brownfield, the location of these sites within the city fabric make them an attractive commodity. Redundant transport infrastructures, once used to link these industrial sites, with their linear character and expansive networks offer the potential combining of these systems, producing a collective infrastructural system running through the urban fabric whether it be dense or otherwise. Infrastructure after all ‘can be seen as a tangible structuring device that operates at the scale of the city” (Carlisle & Pevzners, 2013: Online).
At the other end of the density spectrum redevelopment of these voids also promotes the halting of sprawl, the prevention of which is a key agenda within many towns and cities. Recycling, reusing and repurposing of these sites is ‘one that is likely to continue to influence sprawl through the rebuilding of the urban core and reducing further encroachments into “greenfield” sites.’ (Kirkwood, 2001:7) Repurposing therefore not only economically benefits the city core but also helps to slow down urban spread protecting further development onto to ‘greenfield’ sites. Preventing development on ‘greenfield’ protects the rural landscape from further encroachment as well as promoting economic development within declining urban areas. ‘Intensive and uncontrolled development at the fringe appears often to intensify economic recession and the decline of urban cores.’ (Gospodini, 2006: 327)
Treatment of infrastructure, whether the infrastructures original function is obsolete or newly constructed has an impact on the surrounding urban fabric, and as infrastructure is often extensive this impact can be vast. Consequently If reprogramming can act as a catalyst for surrounding urban regeneration, the reprogramming of transport infrastructures could result in vast swathes of regeneration.
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[01,02,03 Images of the High Line, before and after re-purposing]
Examining different approaches recently taken when reprogramming redundant transport infrastructure the most prominent method has been the creation of public space. These have ranged from the intensively programmed High Line in New York (explored further in Chapter 3) to the less intensively repurposed Südgelände in Berlin. In terms of regeneration, projects such as those mentioned above have inspired the urban regeneration of the areas around them (Shannon & Smets, 2010). Subsequent to the redevelopment of an industrial infrastructural relic an entire neighborhood has been regenerated, increasing land values and boosting new spatial developments, it can therefore be established that there is definite financial benefit to this repurposing approach. Whether or not the type of regeneration is widely accepted as positive is unclear.
Another aspect promoting the repurposing of redundant infrastructures is the cost of demolition, which in many situations due to the central location of the redundant transport infrastructure, the potential contamination and disposal of waste materials, is extensive. A study undertaken by the City of Philadelphia, in relation to the Reading Viaduct an obsolete railway viaduct similar to the High Line, determined ‘that the estimated cost to demolish the Viaduct was almost 10 times greater than the cost to address existing environmental concerns and redevelop the structure into a park.’
(Reading Viaduct Project, 2012: Online) The cost of transformation has so far been estimated at $5.1 million in comparison with an estimate between $35.5 million and $51.2 million for complete demolition (Reading Viaduct Project, 2012: Online). When the cost of removal far out ways that of reuse, developing strategies for reprogramming benefits both the finances of the city and the potential gain of a new public space and the associated regeneration.
It can be accepted that the creation of public space is currently a major driver in the repurposing movement, an attractive prospect for investors and proven to have regenerating effects, this approach has both public support and financial backing. Changing the perception of open space, Gisolfi states ‘Future open space in existing cities will be idiosyncratic, derived predominantly from industrial and transportation remnants. Even though new open space created from remnants seems haphazard, I believe we can choose to build it in a way that supports or reinforces the overall city plan.’ (2007:76). Could these ‘idiosyncratic’ open spaces include the other infrastructural needs stated above such as food production, waste management, transit etc. combining the more desirable functions of public space with the productive functions of urban agriculture, water recycling and transit into something which although appears haphazard has multiple productive values.
‘The creation of ‘epicentres’ and production of new urban spaces by means of development, renewal and regeneration of inner city areas raises two critical questions, the first refers to dislocation and displacement of former activities and occupants in the particular area or neighbouring inner city areas, while the second concerns the sustainability of the new epicentres.’ (Gospodini, 2006: 326).
Culture is more and more the business of inner cities, ‘Hall (2000) argued that cities have passed at extraordinary speed from manufacturing to informational economies and from informational to cultural economies;’ (Gospodini, 2006: 316) Current attitudes to infrastructure repurposing fit in with this view of the city as part of the cultural economy, after all it is stated that ‘The first clustering policies in culture originated efforts for renewal, redevelopment and regeneration of declined and underused
areas – usually former industrial areas – in the inner city.’ Filling the industrial void or drosscapes with cultural landscapes can, however, only go so far. The needs of the city out way that of the purely cultural, as previously mentioned, crucial to the future of the city are issues of food production, wastewater management, transit etc.
An alternative reprogramming option is reintroducing transit back to a piece of redundant infrastructure. The Kingsland Viaduct in East London is an example of this type of repurposing. A section of redundant railway infrastructure selected for reuse as a railway 30 years after being decommissioned, the Kingsland Viaduct now successfully functions as part of the London Overground, East London Line. Despite previously being considered for alternative types of development, public park and urban golf course included, the viaduct once again serves the local people as a transportation line.
‘A reexamination of infrastructural space involves the recognition that all types of space are valuable, not just the privileged spaces of more traditional parks and squares, and they must therefore be inhabitable in a meaningful way.’ (Mossop, 2006: 171)
Looking to other alternative approaches Mossop states that ‘the landscape of infrastructure has become the most effective means to explore the relationship between the natural processes and the city,’(2006:165). Infrastructure networks have a comprehensive cover of the city, creating a comprehensive ecological network blurring the boundary between the urban, suburban and rural. An already existing repurposing project, which has an ecological focus, is the Natur-Park Südgelände where ‘around ¬50 years of natural succession have converted the Südgelände, a derelict shunting station in the heart of Berlin, into a highly diversified piece of natural urban landscape.’ (Langer, 2012:152) As the industries, which the railway served declined in the city an especially interesting ecology developed due to the ‘large numbers of plants and insects that had entered the site as stowaways on freight trains from all over Europe, hidden in the straw used to pack citrus fruit and other delicate merchandise,’ (Burg, 2010:2). The diversity and variety of species, which have developed without human intervention, are unique. (Langer, 2012). Conversion of the industrial ecological site to enable public access has been achieved sensitively, paths subtly move through the unique ecology occasionally
stumbling on an industrial relic, which has been restored and retained. Projects like the S체dgel채nde inspire a different type of regeneration, ecological regeneration.
Building on the precedent of the S체dgel채nde, transport infrastructure networks could be utilised further to create ecologically rich and anthropocentrically useful systems handling urban storm water run-off, the urban heat island effect and create more heterogeneous methods of food production. Redundant infrastructures offer the vehicle through which primary experimentations of these systems could be explored, as they already comprise of ready-made partial networks through the city, if not quite fully connected to the rural extremities. These systems could satisfy recent urges for new ecological infrastructures that integrate the biophysical systems and engineered, infrastructural elements. (Carlson, 2013: Online)
Chapter 3. The High Line, New York. The most well known example of railway repurposing, the High Line in Manhattans Lower West Side, has been transformed from derelict elevated railway into a popular piece of urban public space. Prior to the Friends of the High Line, in collaboration with James Corner Field Operations intervening ‘Many New Yorkers came to view the High Line as a mile-long eyesore traversing the city’s Lower West Side. Overgrown with weeds and branded by graffiti, the rail line became a haven for illicit activity’ (Minutillo, 2011:104) Since the phase one of the park opened in June 2009, ‘The High Line has been described as “transformative,” “otherworldly” and “irreplaceable.”’(Gerdts, 2009:18)
The park, which has been described as ‘an example of urban alchemy’ (Jacobs, 2009:62) acts not only as a catalyst for investment in its surrounding neighborhood but also encourages the reassessment of redundant infrastructures in many other US cities and in other de-industrialising western nations. ‘It suggests unlimited opportunities for transforming eyesores into assets, for radical adaptive reuse.’ (Jacobs, 2009:62) Care, however, needs to be taken to prevent meaningless reproductions being developed. The success of the High Line ‘has already led to proposals and planning for
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[01,02,03,04,05 (Baan, 2009) Images of the completed High Line]
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similar projects in Chicago, St. Louis, Rotterdam, Philadelphia, Toronto and Seattle.’ (Gerdts, 2009:22)
One of the most concerning factors of replicating the High Line is the considerable cost that is attached to it, not only in the initial build but also in its ongoing maintenance, which is extensive. Annual costs for management and the general running of the park are estimated at between $3.5 to $4.5 million, this breaks down to $671,641 per acre, making it the most expensive park to maintain and operate within New York City. Comparatively Bryant Park, located next to New York City Public Library, operates at $479,166 (Ulam, 2009). These annual costs combined with the build cost of an estimated $172 million make the High Line an expensive model to copy. These vast costs involved have also led to questions about the justification of such spending in times of austerity, when ‘currently hundreds of state parks are closed or operate for fewer hours with reduced services, such as maintenance, in order to remain fiscally solvent.’ (Berger, 2006:205)
‘But what is the overall benefit to New York City, given the enormous sums of public money that have been poured into a small park that is narrower than the average New York City street in most places?’ (Ulam, 2009:96)
Despite the costs attached to the re invention of the High Line ‘Now complete, it has given cities and citizens across the United States a reason to evaluate existing landscape and infrastructure and see them as opportunities rather than burdens, already proved by a number of like-minded projects popping up nationally.’ (Kolb, 2009:29) Not only inspiring other cities the park has also acted as a catalyst for further regeneration, increasing surrounding real estate values when previously ‘surrounding residential properties were valued 8 percent below the overall median for Manhattan.’ (NYCEDC, 2011: Online). ‘Perhaps most striking, this repurposed rail trestle has served as the catalyst for the redevelopment of an entire neighborhood.’ (Ulam, 2009:95). A recent study by the New York City Economic Development Corporation illustrated in Fig 1. demonstrates the difference in real estate values relative to their distance from 3 major New York Parks,
Central Park, Prospect Park and the High Line. Between 2003 and 2011, property values within a 5-minuet walk of the High Line increased 103 percent this figures differs vastly from those within a 5-10 minuet walk an indication that the regeneration has only reached so far. [Fig 1. ] Table showing the comparative lands values and the % change adjacent to three major New York Public Parks, Central Park, Prospect Park and The High Line.
With an estimated 20,000 people per day (on weekends) climbing up the metal staircases to walk up the promenade (Ulam, 2009:97) the park has unquestionable popularity. Critics have however declared the High Line as ‘a tourist-clogged catwalk and a catalyst for some of the most rapid gentrification in the city’s history.’ (Moss, 2012: Online) The boost to the local economy, which the High Line has undoubtedly caused, has not benefited those who have lived and worked in the area for decades, Moss states, that until very recently West Chelsea was a mix of working-class residents and light industrial businesses (Moss, 2012: Online). However due to the High Line they are now being out priced, no longer able to afford the inflated rental rates of the places they have called home.
There can be no doubt that the High Line has had considerable regeneration effects, and has been met with a great amount of popularity. Whether or not this revitalisation has marginalised those who previously occupied this area is also without doubt. In respect to the rail repurposing projects sprouting up around the USA, and also elsewhere in the world, which seek to emulate the High Line, perhaps new approaches are needed to prevent the type of gentrification which has occurred in the Lower West Side, a less mono-functional, less intensive approach may be required.
Chapter 4: Inspired by the High Line Projects looking to emulate the success of the High Line include the Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago, The Reading Viaduct in Philadelphia, the Sixth Street Embankment in Jersey City, the Iron House Trestle in St Louis among others around the world including the Hofbogen, Rotterdam. For many of these examples the creation of a new public park has been the primary goal, economic development and local regeneration are not necessarily considered. Two of the projects mentioned above look to go beyond purely creating a successful public space and instead include the provision of productive systems, one for dealing with storm water runoff and the other for provision of a forward thinking heating system.
The Reading Viaduct Philidelphia Part of the ‘Rails to Trails’ movement in the USA which riding on the public success of the High Line, has inspired similar projects across North America. Many comparisons can be made between the Reading Viaduct project and the High Line, both decommissioned in the early eighties they were and are located within failing neighbourhoods characterised by post-industrial decline. Although elevated for the majority the Reading Viaduct also has a portion of rail below street level, this section is currently producing the most interesting functional possibilities in terms of functioning beyond that of a public park. On the depressed City branch section of the Reading Viaduct, a ½ mile section will act as a Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SUD). This section will accommodate 37 acres of street runoff forming a system of urban storm water management (Murphy, 2013: Online).
01 [01, Vision for the Reading Viaduct as a green corridor through the city.]
02 [02, Existing conditions on the elevated section of the Reading Viaduct.]
Hofbogen, Rotterdam ‘In Rotterdam, Netherlands, a project known as the Hofbogen aims to turn an abandoned elevated track into a park and commercial space. The project plans from local design firm Dopel Strijkers include a cutting-edge system that uses industrial waste to warm the pre-war buildings alongside the 1.9 kilometer (1.2-mile) park and reduce their carbon footprint’ (Lund, 2013:15). Dating from the early 20th century the Hofbogen train line consists of 2km of viaducts which cut across a 19th century neighbourhood in the north of Rotterdam. Recent proposals have proposed the reuse of the now redundant train line as primarily a public park, with commercial spaces, but secondly as a cutting edge water heating system that uses industrial waste to warm the 19th century buildings resulting in reduced carbon footprint and reduced bills for the residents. The linear structure typical of this type of infrastructure means the heating system can be easily integrated creating a districtheating network. ‘The principle of cascading the heat is used. The pre-war structures can be warmed using 90˚ water (using radiators), the water that comes out at 60˚ can be used for urban agriculture in greenhouses, in turn the 40˚ water from this process can be used for new buildings with concrete core activation. Finally, the remaining water at 25˚ can be used for heating the outdoor pool on top of the viaduct.’ (Dopel Strijkers, 2011: Online) This project although yet to be realized, demonstrates the potential of these redundant infrastructures not only to provide public open spaces whilst stimulating regeneration but also the possibilities of integrating additional functional systems satisfying more of a cities needs.
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[01,02,03,04 (Doepel Strijkers,2009) Visualisation of the Hofbogen, demonstrating the double use of public space and heating system.]
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Chapter 5: Future possibilities for redundant infrastructures, Landscape Urbanism and Living Systems. ‘The first of the two major themes introduced by this new discipline and perspective concerns the capacity of the project to pick up conditions of decline, the absence of positive economic and social trends.’ (Paola, 2012: 111)
All of the afore mentioned case studies lack the scale often related with infrastructural systems, which are by definition widespread networks. The discourse of Landscape Urbanism emerged as a reactionary to the urban environments rapid pace of change and the inabilities of more traditional design strategies to deal with the essentially horizontal character of the developed worlds automobile based urban expansion (Waldheim, 2010). As well as organising fresh urban expansion, Corner states that ‘the empty leftover spaces resulting form the process of de-industrialisation, are the birthplace of Landscape Urbanism as a profession.’ (2001:122) Landscape Urbanism is therefore placed ready to embrace the scale of infrastructure incorporating it within a wider city network. ‘The landscape of the contemporary horizontal city is no longer a place making or a condensing medium. Instead it is fragmented and chaotically spread, escaping wholeness, objectively and public consciousness – terra incognita.’ (Berger, 2006:209) Landscape Urbanism suggests that infrastructure can become the restructuring element to combat this fragmentation, included in this is the integration of redundant drosscape infrastructures. ‘This requires the rethinking of the mono-functional realm of infrastructure and its rescue from the limbo of urban devastation to recognize its role as a part of the formal inhabited city.’ (Mossop, 2006:171).
‘Landscape Urbanists, equipped with a sense of shifting and changing urban morphologies, create new and unforeseen recombinations and hybridizations, liberating the urban design discipline from the current, hopeless, binary opposition of past and present, town and country, in and out.’ (Shane, 2006: 65) One such hybridisation could be the wider combination of redundant infrastructures with systems of food production and wastewater treatment as well as other system requirements within the city.
This hybridisation suggests the reusing of redundant infrastructures, in order to structure the city, employing ecological principles to create Living System Infrastructures, restructuring the city through the production of productive and ecologically informed anthropocentrically useful systems. Living Systems are defined as infrastructure that ‘utilizes landscape systems to perform ecosystem services (treating storm water, increasing air quality, treating or processing waste, sequesting carbon, producing energy or nutrients), taking advantage of synergistic relationships between system components and functions.’(Carlisle, 2013: Online) furthermore ‘Living Systems infrastructure presents a model of thinking and designing hybrid, high performance systems which use an ecosystem ecology perspective to construct and manage environments.’ (Carlisle, 2013: Online). Combining these newly engineered ecosystems with the redundant pieces of industrial infrastructure has the potential to link the systems to vast areas of the city, benefitting a greater number of people.
Conclusion: Transport infrastructure has had a defining role on the development and structure of the city. During the industrialisation of cities transport infrastructure evolved from the horse and cart, to canal boat and eventually railway, carving routes through old cities, dictating the division of space and enabling the transport of product. As industrialisation itself evolved giving birth to mass production and consumerism, transport infrastructure once again had a defining role on the city structure, cars and highways enabled suburban growth whilst initiating decline in inner city industrial areas. It is clear that, historically, transport infrastructure has had a major influence on the morphology of the city. Now in the post-industrial landscape transport infrastructure can once again have a leading role.
Although The High Line is of a relatively small scale and focuses on the creation of a purely anthropocentric public space, there can be no doubt that the project has acted as a catalyst for regeneration. If the High Line is considered a model from which to adapt and progress instead of something to simply copy, its regeneration potential could be combined with productive systems. Examples such as the Hofbogen are already starting to offer a promising future, the next step would be combining heating systems with other systems such as water management and food production integrating these into the urban fabric through the reuse of redundant infrastructure whilst in parallel still creating a public space.
A key point is the fact that infrastructure has incredible range through the city, its linear character could easily be adapted to function as linear systems for wastewater collection, urban agriculture and incorporate future transit methods. The large costs involved in demolishing redundant transport infrastructures mean the call for reuse is an economically sound one. If systems such as those suggested for the Hofbogen in Rotterdam are implemented, the reduction of carbon foot print and reduced energy bills makes an area more attractive to a potential buyer and s popularity increase so will the level of regeneration. However, as with the High Line, sudden rises in interest can send prices soaring making an area unaffordable to locals and gentrifying rather than regenerating.
Landscape urbanism with its wide scale plan has the ability to manage citywide regeneration harnessing the large network capacity a piece of transport infrastructure has and enabling citywide benefit. Introducing these systems on a large scale to ensure widespread benefit.
Current methods in public space making on redundant infrastructures are not being disregarded, it is however suggested that they look to seek functions beyond that of just an aesthetically pleasing, culture landscape, that they have a productive function serving the communities around them not just the tourists that flock to see them.
To conclude the development of redundant transport infrastructure can and has acted as a catalyst for regeneration, its potential to do so in the future means considering the wider picture, the city as a whole, here infrastructure both old and new could once again define the city.
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