The Smithian

…the High Line will be copied endlessly, each time with a little less sincerity and a little less skill, until 30 or 40 years from now when today’s hipsters are nearing retirement age, the concept will seem as cheesy and dated as South Street Seaport—an obvious Fisherman’s Wharf knockoff—seems today. But the High Line…does what any great work of visual art does, which is to take an inchoate emotional sense shared by a large group of people and make it concrete, visible in three dimensions. What you make of it is largely determined by what you think of its underlying subject, which in this case is gentrification. If you are part of the community pushed out by the new wealth gentrification inevitably brings, then no doubt the High Line’s precious attention to symbols of decay and ruin… will seem calculated to piss you off. If, on the other hand, you are part of a gentrifying wave…then the High Line will seem to be singing from your hymnal…

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