Buffalo Bayou, a slow-moving waterway that runs through the center of Houston, is widely considered the city’s most significant natural resource. Over the past decade, the Bayou’s sector west of downtown has experienced renewed vibrancy as a result of placemaking interventions that created the 160-acre Buffalo Bayou Park, which features trails, play areas, a dog park, pavilions, and gathering spaces for residents to build community. However, the neighborhoods along the waterway’s eastern sector have not seen the same level of investment. These historically disinvested, majority-Black and Latino or Hispanic neighborhoods—the Greater East End and Fifth Ward—have long been physically separated both from the Bayou and each other by large industrial sites, poor street linkages, and limited connections across the waterway.

The High Line Network announces that it has welcomed ten new members into its community of nonprofit infrastructure reuse projects. Since its inception by the High Line in 2016, the Network has grown from an initial group of 19 projects now to 47, highlighting the growing sector of transforming underutilized and abandoned infrastructure into new urban landscapes that value public spaces.

A derelict rail line is being reimagined as a linear park, like Manhattan’s High Line. But in a borough that lacks both green space and transportation, locals wonder whether its best use would be the original one.

At 51 miles long, it’s one of America’s largest infrastructure projects