A High Line for Paris, Only More So

Right now, Paris has an opportunity most cities would kill for: a 32–kilometer strip of unbuilt land stretching though some of its most popular neighborhoods.

What makes this huge plot of land yet more unlikely is that it is actually the product of a 150 year-old infrastructure mistake. The so-called Petite Ceinture (“Little Belt”) railway was built in the 19th century around what was then Paris’s edge, before being overshadowed just a few decades later by the Metro system. Most of the Petite Ceinture has thus been closed since 1934, though one section remained in service through 1985. Freight transit continued until the early 1990s, while some sections in western Paris were incorporated into other non-orbital lines. Current rules state that additions to the line can only be temporary, in case the line is re-used for transit in the future, but mostly the line faded into obscurity as a forgotten tunnel of green through the city.*