Lowline - Blog Posts

A look inside the world's first underground park, the Lowline

Over the weekend a test lab for the world’s first underground park opened its doors to visitors in New York. Housed in the former Essex Street Market building in Manhattan, it is the first step toward making former NASA engineer James Ramsey's idea for the Lowline a reality. His plans for the Lowline propose transforming a disused trolley terminal into a subterranean park using innovative solar technology.

I think it’s a cool engineering experiment but if he really is pursuing this to give green spaces to under served urban communities, then proposing it to be built in LES is fallacy. That area already has parks close by and is inhabited by at least the upper 30% (economically) of the city. What would be spectacular is if the technology they’ve developed for channelling sunlight could be used in subway stations that people already use. Plants and sunlight there would make the lives of millions of commuters across the subway network so much better. This disused trolley place should be made into an urban farm me thinks :)