[URBAN NOTE] "A Park Beneath New York City's Sidewalks"

[rfmcdonald]

CityLab's Jessica Leigh Hester last motnh described a fascinating proposal for an underground park in New York City.

Dan Barasch envisions verdant gardens below New York City’s concrete and asphalt. He pictures locals parading down flights of stairs to be confronted by stalagmites of ferns, bromeliads, and mosses in sunken spaces flooded with light.

It surely sounds fantastical, but New York City is one step closer to a year-round subterranean park now that the Lowline, a one-acre underground green space, has received a preliminary go-ahead from city officials.

On Wednesday, the city’s Economic Development Corporation designated the Lowline as the developer approved to work on plans for the decommissioned trolley terminal beneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

During the early 20th century, the site was a turnaround point for trolleys, but has been disused since 1948. In the interim, the space above ground has transformed into one of the densest pockets in a city already strapped for space. Barasch, the Lowline’s co-founder and executive director, wondered what might happen if developers built down, instead of up.

To prove the premise—an underground park sustained by light siphoned from the sidewalks—Barasch and his collaborators set up a prototype in a former warehouse space two blocks north of the park’s prospective future home. In the Lowline Lab, sunlight streams from a solar canopy mounted above 3,000 plants, including fruit that flourishes with no regard for the season. Inside, there were plump strawberries ready to be picked in March; a rambling mint patch was overgrown in the middle of December. The result, says Barasch, is a pleasantly puzzling sense of being completely immersed in a botanic garden in the midst of an urban area.