[The High Line] Sustainability Literacy Skills




            Awarded 2010 Professional Awards by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) as well as Design Award for Urban Design by the American Institute for Architects (AIA), the High Line demonstrates its enormous success and acknowledgement in the design disciplines. Not only because it has displayed its design skills but also its sustainability literacy skills, shown through its awareness for the built environment, its precedent history and its community, which are all conducive to the High Line’s vision for sustainability.

            The High line has promoted success in urban regeneration and adaptive use using skills for Appropriate Technology and Appropriate Design, including Permaculture Design, and largely incorporating means of Ecological Intelligence.




The High Line has based its design concepts on the community it intends to serve and answering its many needs. This is a people-centered approach, designed for people to engage in, for people to use, and for people to relate to. It involved the users through the process of the design and construction, and it calls and attracts the users even after its completion. This is achieved through a mutual understanding for the project and a shared goal for the community.

            Not only does the design answer to the people of the local community, it also responds to the area’s ecological and physical environment. The wide variety of vegetation chosen for this project was selected specifically for their ability to meet the area’s micro-climate as well as evoke the area’s native and local vernacular vocabulary. The plant’s beneficially high level of diversity and its perennial nature displays the sustainable skill, known as Permaculture Design, to integrate nature ecologically into design.

            All these approaches in design and technology represent the project’s Ecological Intelligence, relating and connecting the people and the environment collectively, in respect to the land and its ecosystem. It deals with multiple factors including social and cultural issues, such as the community’s culture and needs, as well as respecting the environmental aspects of the area such as incorporating local ecology, readapting used materials, and increasing biodiversity.
             


            The accomplishment of the project would not have been successful without the Interdisciplinary Skills involved throughout the process. The entire project included design teams consisted of landscape architects, architects, planting designers, lighting and signage designers; engineers for irrigation, water features, civil and traffic engineering; management involving public space, parks and recreation, and historic preservation; construction teams for landscaping, contracting and management. Most importantly the project involved the participation of the community, including the neighborhood and the city administration.

            All of these different groups of professionals and participants have contributed their knowledge and vision for the High Line. Every individual involved in the project has displayed their own responsibility as citizens in the same society and for the common goal. The inclusionary understanding and participation involved would have required effective communication across disciplines and different levels of society. The collaboration resulting in diverse and collective knowledge is achieved through the Interdisciplinary Literacy of this project.


            The High Line has especially displayed its significant skill of Cultural Literacy as it works constructively between different social groups and bringing together different insights and perspectives. The project not only shows awareness for different cultures in the current community, but also for differences in past and present cultures. Through design and community participation, the High Line re-identifies the local culture of the site, showing respect for its past history, revitalizing it in the present time, and allowing for it to evolve in the future.

            The project called for such cross-cultural and local awareness as well as critical reflection and thinking as it involved multiple perspectives from diverse groups and various social contexts. It also engages skills for the involved individuals to deal with faced changes and it allows for them to build self-confidence through participation in the network of community and common vision.

            Friends of the High Line is a non-profit group that partners with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and acts to maintain operations and public programming involved with the High Line project. Their efforts to bring together the community through events and other participatory approaches are defining means of Social Engagement. They oversee the collaboration between the many groups involved in the design process and continue to cultivate the community the park serves. They encourage local participation through events and tours, or even just visiting the park, to learn and be involved. Through such engagement, it exhibits the idea that education exists in every aspect of Emerging Paradigm.



            The High Line project is a significant case of sustainable landscapes that illustrates many of the necessary and critical skills, attitudes and values for sustainable literacy in the complex society and urgent environment we now live in. Its implementation of these skills have resulted in a substantial example for preservation, innovation and urban revitalization that is the valuable public space the community can engage  in and prosper from today.



References
  1. ASLA – Designing Our Future: Sustainable Landscapes
    < http://www.asla.org/sustainablelandscapes/highline.html>
  2. The High Line
    < http://www.thehighline.org/>
  3. The Handbook of Sustainable Literacy
    < http://www.sustainability-literacy.org/multimedia.html>      


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