Dan Barasch: A park underneath the hustle and bustle of New York City

My dream is to build the world's first

underground park in New York City.

Now, why would someone want to build an underground park,

and why in New York City?

These three tough little buggers

are, on the left, my grandmother, age five,

and then her sister and brother,

ages 11 and nine.

This photo was taken just before they left

from Italy to immigrate to the United States,

just about a century ago.

And like many immigrants at the time,

they arrived on the Lower East Side

in New York City

and they encountered a crazy melting pot.

What was amazing about their generation

was that they were not only building new lives

in this new, unfamiliar area,

but they were also literally building the city.

I've always been fascinated by those decades

and by that history,

and I would often beg my grandmother

to tell me as many stories as possible

about the old New York.

But she would often just shrug it off,

tell me to eat more meatballs, more pasta,

and so I very rarely got

any of the history that I wanted to hear about.

The New York City that I encountered

felt pretty built up.

I always knew as a kid that I wanted

to make a difference, and to somehow

make the world more beautiful, more interesting

and more just.

I just didn't really know how.

At first, I thought I wanted to go work abroad,

so I took a job with UNICEF in Kenya.

But it felt weird to me that I knew more about

local Kenyan politics than the politics of my own hometown.

I took a job with the City of New York,

but very quickly felt frustrated

with the slowness of government bureaucracy.

I even took a job at Google,

where very fast I drank the Kool-Aid

and believed almost wholeheartedly

that technology could solve all social problems.

But I still didn't feel like I was making the world a better place.

It was in 2009 that my friend

and now business partner James Ramsey

alerted me to the location of a pretty spectacular site,

which is this.

This is the former trolley terminal

that was the depot for passengers

traveling over the Williamsburg Bridge

from Brooklyn to Manhattan,

and it was open between 1908 and 1948,

just around the time when my grandparents were

living right in the area.

And we learned also that the site

was entirely abandoned in 1948.

Fascinated by this discovery,

we begged the authorities to draw us into the space,

and we finally got a tour,

and this is what we saw.

Now, this photo doesn't really do it justice.

It's kind of hard to imagine the unbelievably magical

feeling that you have when you get in this space.

It's a football field of unused land

immediately below a very crowded area of the city,

and it almost feels like you're Indiana Jones

on an archaeological dig,

and all the details are all still there.

It's really pretty remarkable.

Now, the site itself is located at the very heart

of the Lower East Side,

and today it still remains one of the most

crowded neighborhoods in the city.

New York City has two thirds the green space

per resident as other big cities,

and this neighborhood as one tenth the green space.

So we immediately started thinking about how we

could take this site and turn it into something

that could be used for the public,

but also could potentially even be green.

Our plan, in a nutshell,

is to draw natural sunlight underground

using a simple system that harvests sunlight above the street,

directs it below the city sidewalks,

and would allow plants and trees to grow

with the light that's directed underneath.

With this approach, you could take a site

that looks like this today

and transform it into something

that looks like this.

In 2011, we first released some of these images,

and what was funny was,

a lot of people said to us, "Oh, it kind of looks

like the High Line underground."

And so what our nickname ended up becoming,

and what ended up sticking,

was the Lowline, so the Lowline was born.

What was also clear was that people really wanted

to know a lot more about how the technology

would look and feel,

and that there was really much more interest in this

than we had ever thought possible.

So, like a crazy person, I decided to quit my job

and focus entirely on this project.

Here is us with our team

putting together a technology demonstration

in a warehouse.

Here's the underbelly of this solar canopy

which we built to show the technology.

You can see the six solar collectors at the center there.

And here's the full exhibit all put together

in this warehouse.

You can see the solar canopy overhead,

the light streaming in,

and this entirely live green space below.

So in the course of just a few weeks,

tens of thousands of people came to see our exhibit,

and since that time, we've grown

our numbers of supporters both locally

and among design enthusiasts all over the world.

Here's a rendering of the neighborhood

just immediately above the Line's site,

and a rendering of how it will look

after major redevelopment that is coming

over the course of the next 10 years.

Notice how crowded the neighborhood still feels

and how there's really a lack of green space.

So what we're proposing is really something that will

add one football field of green space

underneath this neighborhood, but more importantly

will introduce a really community-driven focus

in a rapidly gentrifying area.

And right now, we're focusing very closely

on how we engage with the City of New York

on really transforming the overall ecosystem

in an integrated way.

Here's our rendering of how we would actually

invite people into the space itself.

So here you see this iconic entrance

in which we would literally peel up the street

and reveal the historical layers of the city,

and invite people into this warm underground space.

In the middle of winter, when it's absolutely freezing outside,

the last place you'd want to go would be

an outdoor space or outdoor park.

The Lowline would really be a four-season space

and a respite for the city.

So I like to think that the Lowline actually brings

my own family's story full circle.

If my grandparents and my parents were really

focused on building the city up and out,

I think my generation is focused on reclaiming

the spaces that we already have,

rediscovering our shared history,

and reimagining how we can make our communities

more interesting, more beautiful and more just.

Thanks.

(Applause)