London’s answer to New York’s High Line is scrapped

The Camden Highline, a multimillion-pound effort to transform a disused rail line into a greenery-filled walking and cycling paradise, has been all but scrapped.

Nearly a decade since it was conceived as London’s answer to New York’s fabled High Line, the project has fallen victim to high costs and the energy crisis.

The scheme’s organisers said: “The team was built around the ambition to transform a disused railway viaduct into a new local park, garden walk and wildlife corridor. However, over the last five years, the UK has experienced a series of sustained economic shocks, with construction costs in particular rising well above general inflation. Until now, these pressures have been factored into the project’s modelling, but the emerging 2026 energy shock represents a further step change.”

The statement said the project would be “pausing with immediate effect”.

The Camden Highline was intended to run almost a mile of elevated rail track from Camden to King’s Cross, with landscaping to encourage walking and cycling and planting to attract butterflies, bees and birds. The route would have passed Camden Road overground station and finished at York Way in King’s Cross.

It was first suggested after the success of the New York High Line, which has been credited with revitalising postindustrial neighbourhoods on Manhattan’s west side and was itself inspired by the Coulée Verte elevated park in Paris. Since opening in 2009, the High Line has become a tourist attraction in its own right and inspired a movement to reclaim abandoned infrastructure in other cities.

Oliver O’Brien, a geography researcher at University College London, put forward a London version and the idea was promoted by the Kentishtowner newspaper and the Camden Town Unlimited business association.

An aerial view of the Camden Highline. It was supported by the local business association and 1,200 donors. Photograph: Handout

One stretch of the Highline has been completed as part of the Coal Drops Yard development, involving a bridge across the Regent’s canal from the Camley Street nature reserve that transforms into a landscaped walkway popular with office workers and tourists.

Highline organisers blamed their decision on the squeeze on “discretionary capital projects, as support is increasingly focused on essential and statutory services. Taken together, rising costs and reduced funding capacity mean the project is not currently viable in the present economic climate”.