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Miracle above Manhattan. New Yorkers can relax over busy streets in an innovative park called the High Line. Parks in large cities are usually thought of as refuges, as islands of green amid seas of concrete and steel. When you approach the Hig Line in the Chelsea neigbourhood on the lower west side of Manhattan, in New York, what you see first is the kind of thing urban parks were created to get away from – a harsh, heavy, black steel structure supporting an elevated rail line that once brought freight cars right into factories and warehouses and that looks, at least from a distance, more like some abandoned leftover from the past than an urban oasis. Until recently that’s precisely what the Hig Line was, and crumbling one too. Many people couldn’t wait to tear it down. Almost a decade later, it has been turned into one of the most innovative and inviting public spaces in New York City. The balck steel columns that once supportede abandoned train tracks now hold up an elevated park – part promenade, part town square, part botanical garden. Walking on the Hig Line is unlike any other experience in New York. You float about eight metres above the ground, at once connected to streat life and far away from it. You can sit surrounded by carefully tended planting and take in the sun and the Hudson River views, or you can walk the line as it slices between old buildings and past striking new ones. I have walked the Hig Line dozens of times, and its vantage point, different from that of any street, sidewalk, or park, never ceases to surprice and delight. Not the least of the remarkable things about the Hig Line is the way, without streets to cross or traffic lights to wait for, ten blocks pass as quickly as two. The High Line is a wonderful idea that was not only realised but turned out better than anyone had imagined. The real heroes of the story are Joshua David, a freelancewriter who lived near the midsection of the Hig Line, and Robert Hammond, an artist who also lived nearby. ‘I saw an article saying that the Hig Line was going to be demolised, and I wondered if anyone was going to try to save it,’ Hammond said to me when I interviewed them. ‘ I was in love with the steel structure, the rivets, the ruin. I assumed that some civic group was going to try and preserve it, and I saw that it was on the agenda for community meeting. I went to see what was going on, and Josh was sitting next to me. We were the only people at the meeting who were interested in saving it.’ ‘The railroad sent representatives who showed some plans to reuse it, which enraged the people who were trying to get it torn down,’ David explained. ‘That’s what sparked the conversation between me and Robert – we coude’t belive the degree of rage some of those people had.’ David and Hammond asked rail road officials to teake them to look at the Hig Line. ‘When we got up there, we saw a mile and half of wild flowers in the middle of Manhattan. New Yorkers always dream of finding open space – it’s a fantasy when you live in a studio appartment.’ David said. And that’s how the project begane. From the day the first section of the Hig Line park opened, it has been one of the city’s major tourist attractions. Yet it is just as much a neighbourhood park. When I was on sunny day last autumn, a section the designers had designated as a kind of sundeck was jammed, and ther seemed to be as many locals treating the area as the equivalent of their own beach as visitors out for a promenade. Sometimes dreams really do come true.