The recent opening of the Castlefield Viaduct Sky Park in Manchester, UK, has brought fresh attention to the growing number of projects that reuse urban infrastructures to create linear parks.
When the Promenade Plantée opened in 1993 on top of an abandoned railway viaduct in Paris, it was reportedly the first of its kind. It provided local residents a green escape, ten metres above the tarmac of the street below, and a beautiful, three-mile meander from the Bois de Vincennes to Bastille. The opening of New York’s fabled High Line, in 2009, further cemented this type of urban regeneration as something for cities to aim for.
