Application Of Landscape As Urbanism

“High Line Effect” is created to describe New York’s High Line Park,a park transformed from an abandoned elevated railway,for its surprisingly great catalytic influence on the renovation of West Chelsea and beyond.Described by its leading designer James Corner as “a new type of landscape”,High Line Park is deemed to be a subset of theoretical practice of Landscape Urbanism,a mainstream theory first proposed in 1997 arguing a better way to organize cities through urban landscape compared with architecture and planning.High Line Park is never a common project,not only because its story started with Friends of High Line founded in 1999 when the abandoned railway was in the face of demolition,but also because it is a pioneer challenging where a park could come from,who could be involved,and how far it will go beyond,arousing a lot of discussion in multi-disciplinary fields,including vision and value of the design,gentrification of neoliberal city,urban political ecologies,etc.Through literature review,this essay points out that the mutualism between theoretic views and their representative cases is insufficient,which is one of the key reasons that the theory is criticised for lacking in practical reference.Based on such critique,this research focuses on the 20 years’(1999-2019)project development process of the High Line,both embodying the theoretical views and conducting indepth discussion in response to four core questions: 1)Why is the High Line a representative work of the theory of Landscape Urbanism?;2)Among the abstract concepts of Landscape Urbanism,what kind of urbanism does the High Line as “a piece of lens” reflect?;3)Why is it landscape as urbanism,why and how does the High Line become the media of urbanism?;4)From the end of 20 th century when the theory first proposed till now,what are the changes of the model/paradigm that the High Line Effect represents,and what new viewpoints can these changes contribute to the theoretical development of post Landscape Urbanism? As a research oriented by questions through elucidating,reconstructing theory and case narration,the research material of this paper is mainly based on the abundant material accumulated during more than 20 years on the one hand,and on the other hand this paper applies the research methods of biographical study and narrative analysis under the isomorphism in institutional theory to disassemble and analyse strategies,partner relationships,etc.By dual retrospect of the development of both the theory and the project,the conclusion responds to the classic questions of the theory of Landscape Urbanism through the detailed case study: what is the subject of landscape architecture and what is the profession of landscape architect? That is to say,this research presents the role changes of the High Line in the process of urbanism on different scales and in different perspectives,and similarly the role changes of landscape architects in the full project development cycle.This essay aims to contribute to the theory of Landscape Urbanism,which has been constantly developed over the past more than 20 years,by the research of its classical theoretical subset in the full project cycle.Meanwhile,the conclusion also criticises the limited intervention of the professional landscape architects who cannot be entitled as the planner of this age and the limited understanding of their professional potential by professionals in other fields.Such empirical conclusion provides landscape architects with experience of how to extend their work beyond the traditional design work and caution them against the risk of being marginalised in neoliberalist cross-disciplinary cooperation.