From Burying Highways to Tactical Urbanism and the Impactful Stuff In Between
Our urban environments are layered—the result of decades or even centuries of private development, public infrastructure and incidental componentry yielding an often unwieldy, uncoordinated aggregation.1 Among it all is lost space, no-man’s land that has, for one reason or another, been left over, looked over or purposefully neglected. You might not see it at first, but it’s there, often in plain sight, lurking behind buildings, under overpasses or even high above on viaducts.
Often the spaces are the direct result of infrastructural interventions, the types of spaces that mega projects in the modern city seek to reduce or eliminate through design refinement. But what of the bridge undercrofts, the abandoned overpasses and the rusting relics of industry long since banished to the outskirts of the city? How can these urban spaces, often seen as liabilities, be amenitised, turned into assets for modern urbanites? Many cities around the world are grappling with these questions—among them Melbourne, as it examines what to do with its ‘desolate’ spaces.2
Rails to Trails—A Global Phenomenon
If there is a poster child for urban infrastructure reuse for public amenity, Manhattan’s High Line would be a logical contender. While not the first example of the reuse of unused infrastructure, it is one of the highest profile, most widely known and wildly successful.3 The project transformed a long-disused elevated industrial railway line that sliced through the westside of lower Manhattan into a 2.2-kilometre-long linear park—a project type known as ‘rails to trails’—that attracts millions of visitors annually.
The catalytic nature of such projects is clearly visible in the surrounding area, epitomised by the underway redevelopment of Hudson Yards, leveraging the air rights above a rail yard at the northern end of the High Line. Closer to home, this has inspired the recently unveiled mega project plans to develop 24 hectares above Sydney’s Central Station rail yards and platforms, announced this week by the NSW Government.4
The High Line drew inspiration from an earlier international precedent, the Promenade plantée René-Dumont that opened in Paris in 1993, which, like the High Line, reimagined a disused rail line as a public park. And since the opening of the High Line in the early 2000s, its popularity has been an inspiration for similar projects around the world.5 The trend is not limited to urban areas, either, with disused rail corridors repurposed into long-distance trail connectors in regional and rural areas—something the NSW State Government has thoroughly embraced.6
Transitions Beyond Trains
Of course, the trend of repurposing or repositioning infrastructure is not limited to rail-based transport. Underutilised car parks or car parks located in prominent urban locations have been a target for reimaging.7 Similarly, major roadways have been either undergrounded or fully removed, providing for new public spaces such as parks and plazas, or even rewilding through efforts to restore waterways and natural amenity long lost under urban development.8 Presently in Australia, there have been proposals to repurpose or remove the Cahill Expressway in Circular Quay to create new public space on Sydney Harbour.9
Even infrastructure to serve water-based and air-based transport options have been transformed. From the 1960s onward, redevelopment of working harbours in inner cities has been a major catalyst for urban redevelopment as port operations moved to remote locations following containerisation. The trend, which emerged in Baltimore, swept the globe, from London to Rio de Janeiro and locally in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.10 Following this trend of departure of heavy infrastructure from urban cores, airports positioned close to population centres are increasingly being turned over to public lands as well.11
Even more broadly, the potential extends beyond transport-related infrastructure. In Copenhagen and Istanbul, old water cisterns have been transformed into public spaces that can host events and art installations.12 In Sydney, the old Paddington Reservoir was reborn as a partially sunken public park after serving a stint as a service station and garage.13
This is all to demonstrate that the reimagination of infrastructure—or former infrastructure—into public space is varied, prevalent and not restricted by culture, country or potential future use.
From Grand to Guerrilla
As the mega projects mentioned above repositioned infrastructure in the context of human-centric environments, a more democratised application appeared at a scale not beholden to mega investment. Through the emergence of a concept known as ‘tactical urbanism’ in the early 2000s, design of space for the public was adopted by the public, allowing people most impacted by the urban form to express and implement their visions.
The rise of tactical urbanism offered residents of the city the opportunity to instate changes that could positively impact the urban realm through guerrilla installations, such as the emergence of Park(ing) Day—a day now celebrated globally by citizens transforming car parks into parklets.14 While the tactical urbanism movement and the implementation of its principles started in the streets, it was soon sanctioned by governments.
Janette Sadik-Khan, as commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, met great success with the technique. By leveraging inexpensive and easily reversible interventions such as paint and planter boxes as proof-of-concept for otherwise controversial projects—such as removing vehicle travel lanes through Times Square—she illustrated positive outcomes of public space generation to elicit community and, ultimately, government buy-in to enact permanent change.15 We see this legacy today in ‘pop-up’ bike lanes and outdoor dining zones that have become de rigour in the post-Covid city.
Creating Lasting Impact
Between the extremes of mega transformations (such as the High Line) and temporary guerrilla installations (such as Park(ing) Day), sits the majority of opportunity for creating lasting impact in our cities. Returning to the situation that Melbourne finds itself in—a question of what to do with spaces under bridges in the city—we can look at the far ends of the spectrum and draw inspiration.
In Sydney, beneath the widened M4, Under the Viaduct delivered a 1.5-kilometre-long community space to connect neighbourhoods previously fragmented by the highway, enlivened with bright colours and bold graphics. And as part of the M6 Stage 1 enabling works, McCarthy-Ador Reserve and Parklands has given residents of the Bayside Council upgraded playgrounds, sporting fields and public amenities. With these projects, the infrastructure in question is still in use while the context around it has been transformed from utilitarian to urban amenity.
Outside of the context of new infrastructure projects, we should be exploring other ‘easy’ wins—places that are already available and able to immediately generate new public space. Like in cities around the world, Sydney has its fair share we can start with, including:
With each new project, there are opportunities to transform the urban experience—minor interventions can have major impacts!
This is the second piece in a series where we are unpacking and exploring the role of design in delivering successful infrastructure projects.
Author: Dr Michael Kahn, Senior Urban Designer, DesignInc Sydney.
References
‘Infrastructure’ conjures images of transport systems and highways, water and electric distribution networks, tunnels and bridges: mega feats of engineering that make modern life possible. These engineered projects often lurk just out of consciousness in our day-to-day urban existence; that is, until something goes wrong, immediately thrusting our reliance on the infrastructure in question into focus.
Michael is an urban and architectural designer with more than 10 years’ experience across a range of scales and typologies. He began in architectural practice in the United States, where…
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