Penn Globe & The High Line Effect

Penn Globe & The High Line Effect: The social and economic effect of public space on its surrounding neighborhoods in Midtown Manhattan.

van der Staaij, E.T. (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Smidihen, H. (mentor)
Koskamp, G. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Complex Projects

NY Midtown Graduation Studio

2020-07-10

Between 2009 and 2019 New York’s High Line was repurposed from an old train track into an elevated park, designed by Diller Scofido + Renfro, after it was saved from demolition through a community initiative, led by Robert Hammond and Joshua David. The High Line spans a highly heterogeneous area (socially as well as architecturally). The park is by many considered as beautifully designed, yet also controversial. The construction led to several major unintended consequences, defined as The High Line Effect: (1) Real estate boom: over 50 projects, worth $2 billion have been developed since the construction of the High Line in 2009 began, most of them extremely exclusive, leading to the phenomenon of super-gentrification, but also resulting in $65 million tax revenue annually for the City of New York. (2) The High Line is used by a heterogeneous user group in different ways, but overflooded by tourists (about 8 million a year) while it was meant to serve the local community. The High Line has been copied all over the world with similar consequences and research shows that not only High Lines but public space in general can produce similar effects.

The design of Penn Globe, a 40.000m² hybrid of a market, gallery and apartments, located in a pedestrianized area, examines the social and economic effect of public space on its surroundings, by not simply copying the High Line but by creating a public point in a currently mono-functional residential social housing neighborhood: Penn South. The ambition is to instigate redevelopment in the area by tying it back together locally while opening it up 'globally' to the rest of Midtown Manhattan. By integrating public space better programmatically and spatially into its urban logic, negative consequences of The High Line Effect can be minimized and a more balanced amount of social and economic value can be created.

architecture
complex projects
public space
public building
New York City
Midtown Manhattan
Market
Housing
Gallery

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Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 E.T. van der Staaij