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Phoenix666 writes:

The benighted Los Angeles River, long an eyesore of trash and water treatment plant outflow, is set to be landscaped as a linear park à la the High Line Park in New York.

Today the river is slated for an overhaul, backed by officials including LA mayor Eric Garcetti and even President Obama. Last spring the Corps agreed to remove concrete along 11 miles of the river. In its place: sloping green terraces and wetlands, cafés, and bike paths. (The city is buying former industrial sites for use as parkland.)

But the river will still be a kind of mirage, a trick of human engineering. The floodplain is a major US city. Almost half the flow during the dry season comes from treatment plants. Much of the rest is urban slobber, runoff from Angelenos washing cars or watering lawns. "It's hard to understand how artificial the river really is," says Lewis MacAdams, godfather of the movement and cofounder of Friends of the Los Angeles River.

This isn't a restoration project. Transforming the river is a grand exercise in modern ecosystem manipulation. What Los Angeles is building is more like a monument to rivers—artificial, in perfect LA style, but constructed on ecological principles. A once-hostile environment will be terraformed into a hub of human activity. "This is the beginning of a golden time for the LA River," MacAdams says. "You can almost taste it." Then he reconsiders. "Well, that's not really the word you'd want to use."

The High Line Park in Manhattan has revitalized the West Side, from the Meat Packing District to Hell's Kitchen. New restaurants, businesses, office buildings, and residential high rises have sprung up along its length, and walking along it is lovely, with excellent views of the Hudson River and the Manhattan skyline. Perhaps this park can do the same for Los Angeles.