Robert Hammond: Building a park in the sky

86,812 views ・ 2011-07-01

TED


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The Highline
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is an old, elevated rail line
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that runs for a mile and a half right through Manhattan.
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And it was originally a freight line
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that ran down 10th Ave.
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And it became known as "Death Avenue"
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because so many people were run over by the trains
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that the railroad hired a guy on horseback to run in front,
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and he became known as the "West Side Cowboy."
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But even with a cowboy,
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about one person a month
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was killed and run over.
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So they elevated it.
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They built it 30 ft. in the air, right through the middle of the city.
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But with the rise of interstate trucking,
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it was used less and less.
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And by 1980, the last train rode.
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It was a train loaded with frozen turkeys -- they say, at Thanksgiving --
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from the meatpacking district.
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And then it was abandoned.
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And I live in the neighborhood,
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and I first read about it in the New York Times,
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in an article that said it was going to be demolished.
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And I assumed someone was working
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to preserve it or save it
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and I could volunteer,
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but I realized no one was doing anything.
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I went to my first community board meeting --
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which I'd never been to one before --
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and sat next to another guy named Joshua David,
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who's a travel writer.
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And at the end of the meeting, we realized
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we were the only two people that were sort of interested in the project;
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most people wanted to tear it down.
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So we exchanged business cards,
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and we kept calling each other
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and decided to start this organization,
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Friends of the High Line.
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And the goal at first
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was just saving it from demolition,
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but then we also wanted to figure out what we could do with it.
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And what first attracted me, or interested me,
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was this view from the street --
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which is this steel structure,
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sort of rusty,
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this industrial relic.
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But when I went up on top,
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it was a mile and a half of wildflowers
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running right through the middle of Manhattan
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with views of the Empire State Building
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and the Statue of Liberty and the Hudson River.
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And that's really where we started,
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the idea coalesced around, let's make this a park,
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and let's have it be sort of inspired
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by this wildscape.
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At the time, there was a lot of opposition.
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Mayor Giuliani wanted to tear it down.
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I'm going to fast-forward through a lot of lawsuits
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and a lot of community engagement.
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Mayor Bloomberg came in office, he was very supportive,
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but we still had to make the economic case.
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This was after 9/11;
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the city was in tough times.
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So we commissioned an economic feasibility study
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to try to make the case.
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And it turns out, we got those numbers wrong.
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We thought it would cost 100 million dollars to build.
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So far it's cost about 150 million.
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And the main case was,
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this is going to make good economic sense for the city.
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So we said over a 20-year time period,
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the value to the city in increased property values
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and increased taxes
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would be about 250 million.
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That was enough. It really got the city behind it.
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It turns out we were wrong on that.
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Now people estimate it's created about a half a billion dollars,
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or will create about a half a billion dollars,
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in tax revenues for the city.
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We did a design competition,
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selected a design team.
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We worked with them to really create a design
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that was inspired by that wildscape.
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There's three sections.
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We opened the fist section in 2009.
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It's been successful beyond our dreams.
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Last year we had about two million people,
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which is about 10 times what we ever estimated.
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This is one of my favorite features in section one.
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It's this amphitheater right over 10th Ave.
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And the first section ends at 20th St. right now.
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The other thing, it's generated, obviously, a lot of economic value;
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it's also inspired, I think, a lot of great architecture.
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There's a point, you can stand here
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and see buildings by Frank Gehry,
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Jean Nouvel, Shigeru Ban,
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Neil Denari.
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And the Whitney is moving downtown
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and is building their new museum right at the base of the High Line.
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And this has been designed by Renzo Piano.
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And they're going to break ground in May.
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And we've already started construction on section two.
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This is one of my favorite features,
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this flyover where you're eight feet
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off the surface of the High Line,
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running through a canopy of trees.
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The High Line used to be covered in billboards,
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and so we've taken a playful take
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where, instead of framing advertisements,
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it's going to frame people in views of the city.
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This was just installed last month.
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And then the last section was going to go around the rail yards,
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which is the largest undeveloped site
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in Manhattan.
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And the city has planned -- for better or for worse --
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12 million square-feet of development
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that the High Line is going to ring around.
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But what really, I think, makes the High Line special
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is the people.
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And honestly, even though I love the designs that we were building,
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I was always frightened that I wouldn't really love it,
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because I fell in love with that wildscape --
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and how could you recreate that magic?
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But what I found
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is it's in the people and how they use it
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that, to me, makes it so special.
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Just one quick example
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is I realized right after we opened
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that there were all these people holding hands on the High Line.
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And I realized New Yorkers don't hold hands;
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we just don't do that outside.
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But you see that happening on the High Line,
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and I think that's the power
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that public space can have
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to transform how people experience their city
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and interact with each other.
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Thanks.
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05:28
(Applause)
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