ELEVATED PARK WITH PNEUMATIC WASTE-MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

HIGHLINE PNEUMATIC WASTE MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE (PILOT)
New York, New York
2019

ClosedLoops, LLC

Piggybacking Tactics Employed:
Inhabit a Niche

THE HIGH LINE CORRIDOR PNEUMATIC WASTE-MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE was a 2019 feasibility and implementation study led by urban designer Juliette Spertus and environmental policy expert Benjamin Miller—cofounders of the research and planning firm ClosedLoops. The project was a multi-stakeholder initiative co-funded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the New York State Department of Transportation. It explored the potential of an infrastructural piggyback on the undercarriage of the High Line elevated park—itself an exemplar of piggybacking atop a former rail-line infrastructure. In ClosedLoops’ scheme, Pneumatic tubes would transport waste, recycling, and organic matter from neighboring buildings and public collection bins to a central collection terminal for processing and transport. This would relieve the increasingly crowded streets around the High Line of garbage and recycling trucks while also providing the surrounding neighborhood with a more sustainable waste management regime. In asking the High Line viaduct to do double duty as both park and waste management system, this proposal recaptures the park’s infrastructural identity and demonstrates how public investment might be better leveraged for multiple social and environmental aims.