The LA Times has a comprehensive, nicely written Column One article on the High Line. Excerpts:

When freelance writer Joshua David and painter Robert Hammond first followed their curiosity over a barbed-wire fence onto the High Line five years ago, they found themselves on an elevated avenue of greenery that overlooked the art galleries of Chelsea and the designer boutiques of the Meatpacking District � two of the city’s newly fashionable neighborhoods.

To the west, there were shimmering vistas of the Hudson River; to the east, the Empire State Building towered.

The abandoned railway, the pair realized, could become a place where pedestrians could stroll unimpeded for 22 blocks, suspended nearly 30 feet in places above the hustle of the streets.

“It is a beautiful, dreamy, evocative landscape � a unique urban ecosystem,” David said. “Yet it was relatively invisible.”

[…]

The pair launched the Friends of the High Line preservation drive, which quickly became one of the city’s most fashionable causes. Today, it has about 6,000 supporters and a $1-million annual budget. There is a staff of seven, a newsletter, a promotional video, a website and an ambitious outreach program. A yearly fundraiser, hosted by fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg and actor Edward Norton, has become a staple on New York’s society pages.

“They have been very creative in generating a buzz and engaging people,” said Frank Uffen, managing director of New Amsterdam Consultants, a firm involved in redeveloping a mile-long viaduct in downtown Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

[…]

Vintage viaducts are the newest enthusiasm of urban preservationists recycling America’s past.

Community groups from Chicago to Philadelphia to the Florida Keys have mobilized to turn the abandoned rail lines into parks � many inspired by the transformation of a crumbling 19th century Parisian viaduct into a 3-mile-long botanical garden.

The Promenade Plantee, which opened in 1998, is linked by elevators and stairways to the Avenue Daumesnil nearby. In the space beneath its 60 stone arches, Paris urban planners encouraged construction of art galleries, cafes and artisans’ studios.

As much as anything, said transportation archeologist Thomas Flagg, the reclamation projects have arisen from a change of heart toward abandoned industrial structures.

Nostalgia for a vanishing manufacturing economy joins with post-modern artistic sensibilities and, driven by real estate speculation, blight becomes beauty.