Italian Architects Look To Replicate NY High Line Success In Rome

On the outskirts of Rome is a mile-long stretch of unfinished elevated track for a tramline. Work stopped in the mid-1990s. Under the guidance of Renzo Piano, architects are turning it into an elevated park. Courtesy of the G124 Group hide caption

On the outskirts of Rome is a mile-long stretch of unfinished elevated track for a tramline. Work stopped in the mid-1990s. Under the guidance of Renzo Piano, architects are turning it into an elevated park.

When the famed Italian architect Renzo Piano was named honorary Senator-For-Life in 2013, he handed over his spacious new office and hefty salary of some $15,000 a month to a team of young architects. They were given the task of helping salvage depressed outskirts of Italian cities. One project was inspired by New York City's High Line the beloved public park built on a derelict rail line elevated above the streets of Manhattan.

Italy is littered with 600 unfinished public works projects incomplete highways, half-bridges going nowhere, skeletons of buildings. They're the offspring of bad governance, greed and state subsidies eaten up by graft.

In Rome, there's an unfinished elevated track cutting through two peripheral neighborhoods, Serpentara and Vigne Nuove. Originally conceived as a 12-mile tramline, looping north to south outskirts, work on the project suddenly stopped in the mid-1990s. The reason is clouded in mystery. The result is just one mile of elevated, abandoned concrete.

Pedestrians stroll on New York's High Line, a public park that has been constructed on the remains of an abandoned elevated railroad in Manhattan. Mark Lennihan/AP hide caption

Pedestrians stroll on New York's High Line, a public park that has been constructed on the remains of an abandoned elevated railroad in Manhattan.

Under Piano's supervision, a team of young architects cleaned up what had become the local garbage dump below. And, using recycled materials, transformed a planned tram stop into a community space for art installations, concerts and workshops. Francesco Lorenzi, 32, says the architects took an abandoned part of the city and put life there.

Lorenzi is one of 600 young architects who competed to join Piano's team of six. It's called G124 the number on Piano's Senate office door. The project was inspired by New York's High Line. But here, the park will be below, and above, pedestrians and cyclists will use a path to get between two big green areas of district Parco delle Sabine and Parco Talenti.

The elevated park is about a 45-minute drive from the city center. These neighborhoods were born during the construction boom of the 1970s and '80s when cozy relations between city authorities and real estate speculators made building permits easy to acquire.

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Italian Architects Look To Replicate NY High Line Success In Rome