From "Little Island Won Me Over" — a New York Magazine article about this new 2.4-acre artificial island on the west side of Manhattan. It has trees and other plantings and various footpaths. The whole thing was dreamed up and paid for by the billionaire Barry Diller — who's been a media mogul since the 1960s and has a list of pop culture credits that is too impressive to begin to list here.
But anyway... that "island"... I can't talk about the impression it makes in person. (I know "in person" isn't the right phrase for encountering plants in real life, but what is?) So I'll just say I wonder if the plants and trees will really thrive there or if it is and always will be stuff grown elsewhere and installed there, to be replaced when it goes bad. It's just a matter of whether the people of New York like it, not for me, 100s of miles away in Wisconsin, to glance over and decide it's unsophisticated or in poor taste.
But I did want to highlight that one quote you see in this post title — "something more interesting than their feet to look at (and smell)...." Because feet are interesting to smell, and yet, I don't think anyone is ever so in need of something to pay attention to that they smell their own feet while they are walking.
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5 comments:
K writes:
"Rather than a Garden of Earthly Delights we have a Sampler of Usual New York Sights with a Side of Flowers. Plants are barely mentioned, though we do learn they were all selected on the basis of their ability to resist stress and urine, which makes them sound like subway passengers, not plants. We hear instead about food trucks, tickets, bathrooms, metal signs, iron earth-holding walls, plants people are going to step on, plants that resemble the Manhattan skyline, rusty poles and old wooden piles in the river - all this arranged along a sidewalk. Only the graffitti are missing (and there are rusty walls ready for that.) And dandelions. Where are the dandelions? Send in the dandelions. There ought to be dandelions somewhere. "
Will writes:
"Artificial islands? I thought that was the sort of thing that the UAE or China did... It has always struck me as excessively screwing around with nature."
Here's the Wikipedia article, "Artificial Islands" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_island:
"Despite a popular image of modernity, artificial islands actually have a long history in many parts of the world, dating back to the reclaimed islands of Ancient Egyptian civilization, the Stilt crannogs of prehistoric Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the ceremonial centers of Nan Madol in Micronesia and the still extant floating islands of Lake Titicaca.[3] The city of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec predecessor of Mexico City that was home to 500,000 people when the Spaniards arrived, stood on a small natural island in Lake Texcoco that was surrounded by countless artificial chinamitl islands....
:Many artificial islands have been built in urban harbors to provide either a site deliberately isolated from the city or just spare real estate otherwise unobtainable in a crowded metropolis. An example of the first case is Dejima (or Deshima), created in the bay of Nagasaki in Japan's Edo period as a contained center for European merchants. During the isolationist era, Dutch people were generally banned from Nagasaki and Japanese from Dejima. Similarly, Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay beside New York City, a former tiny islet greatly expanded by land reclamation, served as an isolated immigration center for the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century, preventing an escape to the city of those refused entry for disease or other perceived flaws, who might otherwise be tempted toward illegal immigration. One of the most well-known artificial islands is the Île Notre-Dame in Montreal, built for Expo 67.
"The Venetian Islands in Miami Beach, Florida, in Biscayne Bay added valuable new real estate during the Florida land boom of the 1920s..."
Scot writes:
"Little Island looks like an island the same as Cinderella Castle looks like a castle."
RigelDog writes:
"Thanks for the article—I did read it, glad to know more about the Island, but----
"What editor thought: If there’s one thing that people want in an article about an amazing new, quirky, beautiful nature-filled island public park retreat in the middle of the largest city in America, it’s that the article contain dense prose and only one photo. Yes, much better to imagine what this unique space MIGHT look like than to actually see some well-done pictures."
nsbuddy writes:
"Using artificial here gets me worried. There's this island in Tampa Bay at the mouth of the Hillsborough River that was
made with dredged bay bottom. Davis Islands , there's 2 of em , dredged up by Davis. I've never thought of it as artificial.
I mean I was born there, my mom died there, I learned to swim at the public pool there, went to this little private school they'd
turned an old hotel into there, had a writing class at that school I probably didn't pay enough attention while there, and they have a little bridge
that you speed over and have a thrill, well a Tampa thrill and I've never thought of it as an artificial thrill there, That's an artificially serious article."
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