Design
That Sinking Feeling: London's 'Tide' Disappoints
London’s newest destination, on North Greenwich Peninsula, shows why it’s time to stop copying New York City’s High Line.
Can we agree to stop calling things “the new High Line”? Barely a month goes by without the emergence of some fresh exercise in pretty-but-functionless urbanism that promises to jump on the coattails of New York’s now world-famous linear park.
There are “new High Lines” in Chicago, Miami, Tokyo, Barcelona, Seoul, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and Atlanta, plus a canceled one in Singapore. The U.K. in particular has gone crazy for Manhattan’s linear park (albeit more as a branding concept than as a built reality), with Big Apple-themed linear-park proposals in Manchester and Leeds, and three in London.