Park in the Sky

Posted by Angie Luvara, NEW YORK, NY --On a recent trip to New York City, at the suggestion of a friend, I visited the Highline Park on Manhattan’s West Side. Typical of many attractions in New York City, this park was anything but ordinary. For starters, it’s in the sky.

Created on top of an old elevated train line, the Highline Park weaves between skyscrapers and along the waterfront from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District all the way up to West 34^th street. Also typical of many attractions in New York City, there are a wide variety of things packed into this long, very narrow park. From sunbathing benches, to a water fountain for children (and adults!) to play in, to food “trucks”, to a lawn that hosts games and activities, to a ton of greenery, to window gazing straight into people’s apartments, the Highline Park has just about everything a visitor could ever wish to see.

As a friend and I walked the entire length of the park and back, I wondered, perhaps inspired by living in the sprawling metropolis of Atlanta for the past year, do we only create these types of innovative, amazing uses of space when we have to? Manhattan is bound by water. It’s very restricted in the ways in which it can handle urban sprawl. I couldn’t help but think, could Atlanta implement more innovative spaces like this? Will we, without having to? After all, we are one of the few completely landlocked large cities in the country. We can sprawl as far as we please. But, will we?

Angie Luvara is a photographer and Managing Editor of Social Shutter. She is also a Doctoral Student at Georgia State University. To view more of her photography, go to her blog at http://www.LuvisMyAmmo.com/blog,