I love New York so much it hurts sometimes; the Delancy Street "Low Line"
This is the Williamsburg Bridge.
It connects the Lower East Side of Manhattan with Mid Brooklyn and on its Brooklyn side, it marks the start of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. On the Manhattan side, The Williamsburg crosses over Roosevelt Drive and what appear to be endless housing blocks.
The approach to the Williamsburg is Delancey Street, a pretty non-descript patch of well-traveled road that looks like the rest of the Lower East Side.
However, underneath Delancey is an deserted rail backyard.
It's but one of countless abandoned rail yards in Manhattan and it always amazes me that the city with the most expensive real estate values in the US has so many under utilized nooks and crannies.
A couple of years ago, an abandoned, elevated railway was turned into New York's now-legendary High Line . However, a couple of forward thinkers have an similar idea for the Delancey Street only instead of a High Line, they've come up with the idea that's come to be known as the Low Line.
The Delancy Underground is its reputable name and at this factor it's inside the method of elevating money to make the dream a truth. I don't forget when the High Line became in a comparable situation and just take a look at it now. I haven't any doubt that the Delancey Underground will show up and primarily based on the speed of the High Line's development and conversion, it will occur quite quickly.
However, the Delancey Underground is very special from the High Line, ordinarily because it's underground. However, the plan for the Delancey requires a number of sky lights, solar collectors and fiber optics to deliver the mild of day underground. The mild levels below Delancey Street can be extreme enough for trees, shrubs, vegetation and grasses to develop. Test out those renderings.
It's going to be top notch and if any city within the world can pull this off, New York's sincerely the only. No wherein else inside the global can mount projects on the dimensions New York can and nowhere else in the world can channel ambition and vision the way New York does so regularly.
Man I love that town and the Delancey Underground is one more reason to hold it in as high a regard as I do.
New Yorkers aside, what public space initiatives has your city undertaken? Are publicly-funded, public spaces important and worthwhile? Talk to me about this stuff.