If you have been to New York recently, you may have visited High Line Park, a 1.45 mile linear space that once was part of an elevated section of railroad.  It is often cited as one of the best urban projects in recent history and an example of how to address urban blight in sustainable ways.

Here in Miami, we may not have starchitects with enormous ambitions for public spaces and philanthropic plutocrats who can write eight-figure checks to fund glitzy new parks, but we do have a constituency that cares deeply about what public parks should look like and are pushing to make their dreams reality.

Among the most ambitious and untraditional public-park plan is The Underline, a project that seeks to transform a 10-mile strip of underused land under the southern leg of Metrorail into a linear park and urban trail. While local governments in the past would have balked at considering  a public park project created by a private group, the proposal’s ingenious use of underutilized government-owned land has attracted support from the county and city.  Although a park underneath an above-ground rail system sounds far from ideal park space, so did creating a park on the former tracks themselves, as was the case with the wildly successful High Line.

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