{"id":357,"date":"2017-10-25T08:48:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T12:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/?p=357"},"modified":"2017-10-25T08:48:50","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T12:48:50","slug":"what-is-the-point-of-the-high-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/cities-and-society\/what-is-the-point-of-the-high-line\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the point of the High Line?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In our class discussion about the High Line we talked about theories of political economy and the physical features of the park, but one of our largely unanswered questions was, what <em>is<\/em> the point of the High Line? In this post, I propose that individual visitors to the High Line, agents in the High Line\u2019s development and the City of New York use and associate with the High Line to gain status.<\/p>\n<p>The High Line is not a large plot of open grassy space nor does it offer many places to sit and stay. Instead, it is a long, elevated and linear pathway that winds by a selection of carefully curated art and food vendors.\u00a0 In class, those who have visited the High Line commented that even accessing the vendors is difficult because of the constant flow of people along the path. So, are people visiting this place just to walk through it? In the most general sense the answer must be no, because if people visited the High Line for the sole purpose of walking they could be doing that on any sidewalk in Manhattan. There must be something that people are getting from the experience of walking on this particular pathway. I propose that people are going to the High Line for the status that occupying the space gives them. Recently, multiple social media platforms such as Instagram and Snap Chat have become increasingly location based with features such as geofilters and location tags. In the age of this specific type of social media, people can track and show others where they have been. As a result, the locations that we associate ourselves with through social media become part of our online presence and identity. Therefore, when people associate themselves with a place, such as the High Line, that is perceived as popular and cool their own status is elevated.<\/p>\n<p>The framework of the political economy provides us with \u201cfive areas of agreement\u201d about urban spaces. One of these areas is the importance of government and politics and another point is that actors, such as individuals or corporations, can impact urban environments.\u00a0 Loughran\u2019s piece on the High Line mentions the co-founders of Friends of the High Line, Josh David and Robert Hammond, multiple times. Lourghran mentions that, \u201cthe initial meeting between David and Hammond has \u2026 taken on mythic status\u201d (55) and that the co-founders have written a book about their High Line project. In founding Friends of the High Line, David and Hammond not only became major actors in shaping a piece of New York but also gained a degree of notoriety and status for their work in the park\u2019s development. Part of my expert question asked about the role that the non-profit plays in navigating between local politics, corporate desires and the public good. There are many ways David and Hammond could have gone about developing the High Line, and yet they chose to start a non-profit. Why might these two have chosen to do this work through the founding of a non-profit organization? Why are they working with politicians and government through the non-profit rather than, for example, running for office? Why might they be affiliating with corporate brands through Friends of the High Line rather than as private investors buying the High Line as property and renting out commercial space? How might doing this work through Friends of the High Line elevate their status and allow them to work more flexibly with major agents such as corporations and local government?<\/p>\n<p>Urban political economy also reminds us that cities are part of a competing global hierarchy and, as industry is being traded in for idea economies, people have more flexibility in choosing where they live. Now that people are not necessarily being drawn to urban centers to work in factories, what is drawing people to spend time in and live in urban centers? We have discussed multiple reasons why people might want to live in or visit a city, but in a time when the factories a city contains do not define its utility, what factors make one city more attractive or competitive than another? I wonder how cities might be trying to use projects like the High Line to develop and curate an individual aesthetic that is meant to make the city a more unique and thus desirable attraction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our class discussion about the High Line we talked about theories of political economy and the physical features of the park, but one of our largely unanswered questions was, what is the point of the High Line? In this post, I propose that individual visitors to the High Line, agents in the High Line\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":490,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cities-and-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/sociology-2202-fall-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}