DECONSTRUCTING THE HIGH LINE: A Public Symposium

Thursday, March 5th, 5:00-8:00pm

The New School, Wollman Hall, 66 W. 11th St., 5th Fl.

The High Line, an innovative promenade created on a disused elevated railway in Manhattan, is widely recognized as among the most iconic urban landmarks of the 21st century. It has stimulated public interest in landscape design while simultaneously re-integrating an industrial relic into the everyday life of New York City. Since its opening in 2009, this unique greenway has exceeded expectations in terms of attracting visitors, investment, and property development to Manhattan’s West Side, and is widely celebrated as a monument to community-led activism, adaptive re-use of urban infrastructure, and innovative ecological design. It has also inspired a worldwide proliferation of similar proposals seeking to capitalize on the repurposing of disused urban infrastructure for postindustrial revitalization.

Providing a much-needed critical perspective, this interdisciplinary symposium will interrogate the High Line’s relation to public space, creative practice, urban renewal, ecology, and public policy. The event brings together scholars from urban studies, geography, cultural analysis, art, and architecture. Participants include:

Julian Brash
Anthropologist at Montclair State University, author of Bloomberg’s New York

Joseph Heathcott
Urbanist at The New School

Scott Larson
Faculty member of the Urban Studies department at Queens College, CUNY and author of Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind

Christoph Lindner
Media studies faculty at University of Amsterdam and editor of book series “Cities and Cultures” for the university’s press

Brian Rosa
Faculty member of the Urban Studies department at Queens College, CUNY and co-editor with Christoph Lindner of the forthcoming book Deconstructing the High Line

Danya Sherman
MIT and former Director of Public Programs at Friends of the High Line

Şevin Yildiz, architect, planner, and faculty member at Barnard College and the New Jersey Institute of Technology

Deconstructing the High Line is co-sponsored by the School of Undergraduate Studies at The New School, the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School, the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College,CUNY, and the Amsterdam Center for Globalisation Studies.

Those attending are invited to join a reception and short presentation immediately following the symposium to mark the publication of Christoph Lindner’s new book on New York City, Imagining New York City: Literature, Urbanism and the Visual Arts (Oxford University Press, 2015).  More info may be found here