Manhattan makeover for London with floating green walkway plan

New York was revitalised by the High Line, a ribbon of parkland floating above Manhattan on a disused elevated railway that has become one of the city’s biggest tourist attractions.

Now the High Line’s designer hopes to give London its own green thread, after being chosen to create the Camden Highline.

James Corner was picked last week as the lead architect for the structure, a linear park on three-quarters of a mile of railway viaducts running from Camden to Kings Cross, which he believes will give London a similar boost after the trials of Covid and Brexit.

“In New York they struggled for years to get political interest and funding and it was only after 9/11 that they invested in projects like the High Line,” Corner said.

“In some ways this is a very similar project, a very positive feelgood investment to help London come out of all the negative vibes of the past couple of years.”

At least 700,000 foreign-born residents left London in the 12 months up to September 2020, according to the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence, and uncounted others have been staying with family outside the capital during the pandemic.

Projects like the Camden Highline are an essential part of reversing that trend, Corner told the Observer.

“When cities start to stagnate, they can go downhill really fast. This project is something that is catalysing and revitalising, keeping Camden alive as a place.

“If you have the opportunity to live in a city that’s got great parks and gardens and high lines and canals and things that bring people out of a weekend, it’s just cool – it’s something you want to be part of. You need the magic that makes people say ‘I want to live in London’.”

Calling it the Hanging Gardens of Camden Town might raise unrealistic expectations, and the first designs will not be seen for many months, but Corner anticipates a lot of greenery with “a palpable sense of nature – birds and butterflies” as well as places to meet and picnic.

His firm, James Corner Field Operations, was selected after a competition involving 75 bids in what has been an unusually community-led process.

The idea of a London highline was first mooted by Oliver O’Brien, a geography researcher at University College London, who was considering which parts of the capital might be suitable for a linear park.

One already exists a little further north of Camden – the Parkland Walk, a nature reserve created out of a former railway line from Finsbury Park to Highgate in 1984. The first floating parkland on a former viaduct was the Promenade Plantée in Paris.

O’Brien’s idea was picked up by the Kentish Towner, a local newspaper, then adopted by Camden Town Unlimited (CTU), which represents businesses in the borough.

The route runs alongside track used for the overground North London Line, starting in the west at Camden Gardens, going past Camden Road station and on to York Way at Kings Cross.

After lengthy feasibility studies, CTU began conducting walking tours underneath the railway, and gathered more than 1,000 crowdfunders to start the ball rolling.

The next stage will be to canvass more local views, then submit plans to Camden council in about 18 months’ time. CTU’s chief executive, Simon Pitkeathley, expects the project to cost about £35m and open in about three years.

“We need to make sure it grows from the bottom up,” he said, adding that connecting Camden Town to Kings Cross would help the economy and hopefully become a tourist attraction.

“I hope one of the reasons it will be used is because it’s beautiful. The fact that you’re going to be able to get off an overground train straight onto the Highline will add to its usefulness and encourage normal use as well as visitors. But you want both.”

Corner was keen to emphasise that the Camden Highline will have a different character from that of its New York counterpart.

The New York High Line is surrounded by skyscrapers, yet has an open vista. Camden’s buildings are low rise, and the park will run alongside a working railway, so needs a wall separating promenaders from locomotives.

“Camden has its own dishevelled, edgy, eclectic feel,” he said. “It has its own vibe and own context that we want to leverage and play on. It’s not New York, so this elevated walk should be unique to Camden.”