By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MEATPACKING DISTRICT — Cities from around the world are again looking to copy Manhattan — this time taking inspiration from the High Line.
Developers and city officials from Hong Kong to Detroit are looking to convert old railroad beds and abandoned train stations into useable public spaces, much in the way New York created the west side's elevated park, the New York Times reported.
“There’s a nice healthy competition between big American cities,” Chicago city planner Ben Helphand told the Times. “That this has been done in New York puts the onus on us to do it ourselves and to give it a Chicago stamp.”
In Philadelphia, businessman Paul R. Levy is considering taking the idea a step further, by converting the 60-foot wide Reading Viaduct into an elevated park and bike path.
The founders of Friends of the High Line, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, originally got their inspiration from the development of the Promenade Plantee in Paris, an elevated park built on an abandoned railroad viaduct in 1988, according to the Times.
