The current global health emergency and the ongoing uprising against police violence in the United States have once again laid bare the nation’s enduring crisis of white supremacy.

As New York City’s COVID-19 numbers improve, more and more of the city is reopening. The High Line opens Thursday with ticketed entry. It’s one of the first big attractions to reopen in the city.

Metropolis catches up with the High Line Network, a consortium of North American reuse projects that has been sharing notes and best practices through the pandemic.

I’ve heard the same refrain from both friends and strangers, over and over, ever since the pandemic hit: “COVID has upended life as I know it. But I’ve found peace along the Detroit Riverfront.”

Parade pulled together more than 50 greenways, at least one from each state, in hopes that you’ll be inspired to meander with us through neighborhoods, parklands, woodlands, wetlands—even mountains, canyons, deserts and glaciers. Turns out, some greenways are not even green but are white with snow or ice, and others in urban corridors are filled with confetti-colored murals.

Covering three days, the symposium was an intense time of learning and interacting with a wide range of leaders on the local and national level who are developing exciting community focused public spaces.

From October 16 – 18,  the High Line Network convened the largest gathering of North American infrastructure reuse project leaders in our first ever symposium Beyond Economic Impact: Charting the Field of Infrastructure Reuse.

An installation on the High Line shares writing by prisoners in a space that emulates cells. The Writing on the Wall is the second project of the High Line Network Joint Art Initiative and will travel to other sites across the United States.

Earlier this month, Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit that operates and manages the High Line in collaboration with New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, brought together leaders of 60 infrastructure reuse projects from the U.S. and Canada for a symposium titled “Economic Impact and Beyond.” Its goal was to examine if new public spaces, being created out of underutilized infrastructure, were incorporating equity considerations into their plans and explore strategies to ensure that benefits from such projects reach all communities.

A new report from UCLA and the University of Utah surveys High Line Network members on strategies for “greening without gentrification”