Camden Highline: Inside the campaign to green the tracks

The popularity of New York’s Highline and the boom in footfall and investment that surrounded the transformation of a disused railway into an urban park saw urban geographers and planners alike scouring local maps for their own disused infrastructure. 

Camden was no exception. The discovery of a disused viaduct running between King’s Cross and Camden Town sparked the campaign for a Highline to bring its magic dust to the neighbourhood. A crowdfunding campaign run by the Business Improvement District (BID) created a chorus of local voices calling for its creation and brought Network Rail, TfL, Camden Council and other key landowners to the table.

Fast-forward to now, and the Camden Highline has planning permission and is now fundraising towards the build. The BID behind the endeavour, Camden Town Unlimited, has created a charity under the name Camden Highline, and is seeking donations and volunteers for their "new park in the sky for London."  

"We started out just talking. We did a lot of those back of the pub meetings, a lot of walks. We tried to engage with local people as much as possible," says Simon Pitkeathley, CEO of Camden Highline and CEO of Camden Town Unlimited. "But then we launched a crowdfund back in 2017 basically to do the feasibility and that was the thing that really kicked it off. And it did get Network Rail excited about something as crazy as this." 

The fact that the project is led by a BID speaks to the growing and more ambitious role these vehicles – funded by a levy paid by eligible local businesses in a given area after a successful ballot – are playing in the placemaking and reshaping of UK cities. 

BIDs are still a relatively new phenomena in the UK, having originated in Canada and popular in the USA. Pitkeathley says that although BIDs are known for hanging baskets and Christmas lights, they can do a lot more than that:

"Because we sit in this rather unique space, where we understand risk and are prepared to take it, we can do things that others can’t." 

Indeed, the Camden Highline is another example of the growing power of BIDs to significantly reshape UK cities.  it was the Northbank BID in London that secured £18m in funding to pedestrianise and improve the Strand Aldwych in London. Other towns such as Altrincham have benefitted from their BID’s investment in public realm.

In The Developer Podcast, Christine Murray sits down with Pitkeathley to learn about the journey so far and the work to come, alongside Georgie Street, Head of Projects at Camden Town Unlimited and Tatiana von Preussen, architect and co-founder of vPPR. 

Unique challenges face the design of the final structure, such as its position along a live railway, the stipulation by National Rail that all structures be demountable, and the need to create staircases and other access points for pedestrians.

Nevertheless, the remarkable location of the project assures the popularity of this 20-minute walk, which will begin in Camden Gardens near Camden Town Underground and finish five minutes from the King’s Cross Central development. The BID has estimated that 20,000 citizens live within 500m of the Camden Highline. 

In fact, the Highline project has become fundamental to a new 20-minute Camden project, inspired by the 15-minute city concept. The Camden Green Loop is another BID project that plans to link up, through signage and awareness, parks and high streets to create a 4-mile walking route.