![]() “We look forward to seeing this all over the city,” Design Trust executive director Susan Chin told the crowd. What was on display in Brooklyn in May was the first fruit of the Design Trust’s project-soon it will be followed by five other pop-ups in the shadows of New York’s expressways, railroad tracks, and bridges. But in an age of municipal budget retrenchment and skyrocketing land costs, these shady slivers are what’s left for public space. “We try and avoid … encouraging people to spend hours at the site, because the respiratory risk can be high,” explained Dan Adams, one of the architects behind Boston’s Infra-Space below I-93. One legacy of highway construction that can’t always be overcome, however, is air-quality problems from truck traffic. Built stock its perfect for busy two track lines, but can be assembled for a single-track line, or combined with a second kit to handle three or more tracks. ![]() In New York, an unused subway passageway at Columbus Circle has been transformed into a minimall. The Art Deco Highway Underpass is a unique Walthers Cornerstone structure kit that adds a dash of panache to post-1930s era highway scenes. Investing in transportation infrastructure through the National Trade Corridors Fund is an important part of growing. That’s what has happened in Mexico City, where the Bajo Puentes program has recruited cafés and convenience stores to the darkened space beneath the city’s Circuito Interior-though not on the city’s poorer east side. The completion of the Mountain Highway Underpass is another milestone in the Government of Canada’s efforts to enhance Canada’s transportation infrastructure and ensure greater long-term efficiency for our supply chains. More typically, though, job growth finds the el-space only in cities with sky-high land values, where retail is happy to take up the space under highways. Then weve got these sort of renown underpasses in Prague: a former railway tunnel rebuild into bicycle path, Karlín pedestrian tunnel and an underpass near Kaerov metro station decorated with graffiti. “Three years ago, I could have bought a lot for $5,000,” Stacy Patton, the BeltLine’s director of asset management, told me. I would vote for an underpass in Jelení píkop near the Prague castle: here, here, and here. Nearly 20 percent of the city is within a half-mile of the BeltLine, and it’s hard to underestimate the excitement-and speculation-the project has generated there. Cars and trucks are passing above while cars drive by on the street below the underpass. The latter is a string of linear greenways, also repurposed from freight rail, under construction around Atlanta. The former is a repurposed elevated railway whose measly 14-foot width sees foot traffic from more than 1 million Chicagoans a year. Walking under the open sky is not a hard sell to parkgoers, as projects like Chicago’s 606 and Atlanta’s BeltLine demonstrate. The idea has its roots in the rails-to-trails movement that swept across (and below) obsolete urban railroads beginning with Paris’ Promenade Plantée, which opened in 1993, and reached its apex with the High Line, New York City’s blockbuster real estate catalyst that opened in 2009.
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