warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
The Taiwan Connection mildly reminds me of the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. I wish I got to see the High Line while I was in New York– next time I guess. Very cool.
I was actually just watching the New York episode of Somebody Feed Phil, not too long after reading your comment, and the High Line came up. This got me wondering, which city was the first to do this sort of thing? Was Taichung inspired by New York?
Turns out that Paris built the world's first urban rail to park conversion in 1993, but a 390 km long rural trail like this was built in Missouri in 1990, and there's a rural rail to trail that was built in the 1980s near Melboure, Australia. Chicago seems to have the first urban rail to trail in the U.S., built in 1996, but New York's High Line, built in 2009, seems to be the most influential of these urban rail to trail conversions, and seems to have inspired dozens of cities around the world to try something like this as well.
The reasons why New York's High Line was so influential even though it wasn't the first seem to be many, and I don't really know enough about the subject to summarize them very well. Being a higher profile city must have helped, but it looks like the High Line was successful in cultural and economic terms, which got the attention of city planners around the globe.
The somewhat unique aspect of Taichung's Taiwan Connection is that it is very heritage focused, moreso than other such projects around the world. It's half pedestrian walkway half open air rail history museum.