Date Published 20 April 2011
A disued railway line could be turned into a city centre park.
Residents want to transform the former Castlefield line into Viaduct Park after being inspired by the New York High Line where a disused track in Manhattan has been reclaimed as a community park.
And the scheme has already won high-profile backing.
Former prime minister's wife Sarah Brown contacted one city centre campaigner on the micro-blogging site Twitter saying ‘good idea, a High Line for Manchester would be great'.
The Castlefield plans are part of the Manchester Garden City project to create more green space in the city centre where residents and workers can relax and grow their own produce.
Pioneered by BDP Architects, the project has come up with a string of innovative ideas to transform unused land.
Work on the city's first Garden City scheme, to grow herbs and wild flowers on the banks of Piccadilly basin, began earlier this month.
City centre resident and Labour candidate Kevin Peel said: 'There isn't a lot of land available to develop into green space where residents can just go to sit and enjoy so this is doing something innovative about that.
'We want to drum up support for the idea and look at setting up a partnership over the next couple of years to source funding and get started.
'Manchester's a world-beating city in terms of thinking outside the box and innovative projects and this would surely be one of the first, if not the first, in the UK.'
