la Promenade plantée

 

After getting back from le cimetière des chiens, I found my kiwi party buddies fast asleep (one had spent the morning puking/which in New Zealand they call spewing) outside my window and the other had apparently wandered off later in the day to get reacqauinted with his dinner in a nearby park. Poor bastards.

As for me, I changed out of my now soaking shoes and damp clothes and went on my way to Bastille to find La Promenade plantée. Why I bothered changing I don't know, because it rained even harder that evening. On the bright side, the rain slick asphalt yielded beautiful colours that the weather simply didn't provide, so in a sense, it was worth braving the storm. 

Unike the High Line in New York, which shall forever remain my favourite park, promenade plantée is much older and it seems to have been built as more of green escape from Paris, by which I mean it isn't as well integrated architecturally as the High Line. 

In my humble opinion, strolling through the High Line is as much about the experience of greenery as it is of being in New York City and being on a re-conceptualized piece of history---the train tracks, and you are prompted to see the tracks and you are encouraged tointeract with the streetscape, either through the design and placement of park benches, or temporary art installations that draw on elements of the cityscape. 

These features are somewhat lacking on  la promenade plantée. The walls are too high for you see the city continuously and when you're on the promenade, there's no sensation of being in the middle of Paris. The whole feel of the promenade is also a lot heavier and I didn't notice any trace of its history. 

Not to say that it is inferior. The promenade just evokes reactions and prioritizes different functions. Both are excellent structures in their own right and perhaps the promenade more so, considering its age. After all, the success of public strucutres and spaces lie in the frequency of their use, and I've witnessed heavy usage on both. Besides, I may be biased in my opnion because I've never visited the High Line on a rainy day!