Individual Reflection
As one of icons in contemporary landscape architecture, High Line has been attracted people from various places and different cultures for decades. In order to have a deep understanding of “ High Line,” our group did a detailed research about it by using New School Libraries system. It was quite excited for me at first as it was my first time using Libraries to search online resources. However, the process wasn’t easy as I expected. Sometimes, the online pages showed to me that there is no “Electric Version” to read. Moreover, within typing the word “High Line”, there are too many resources came out and some of them were not even related to High Line at all. The first night, I spent several hours reading the text but hardly found anything useful to me. I felt frustrated but soon realized that it is the process and I would getting used to this system soon.
There are some different types of databases online and mainly I choose to use JSTOR and Proquest. The results on Proquest was very useful and straight forward, so does JSTOR. However, EBSCO produced the worst results because I could not find nothing on there.
During researching, I found that search terms and filter that work— Usually after typing the word “High Line” , there were more than 70,000 results. By using filter, I could get accurate informations that I want. Meanwhile, I was having a hard time using Reworks because after I keeping my resource in Rework, I could not reopen that page again.
Personally, the most interesting aspects of “High Line” is the criticisms part. Most of people love this project as the High Line helps people moving through the city in a new way and seeing the city in a new way. However, not everyone agreed, someone said it is a big ugly piece of junk. Higgins, Adrian sharply points out that the situation for plants to grow on High Line is a hostile environment as the elevation and lack of soil depth pus stresses on the plants year-round. According to Iovine, Julie V’s article which published on Wall Street Journal, the cost of the High Line is way too much—“it is no match for the startling notations pointing out that New York construction spending leapt to $32.4 billion in 2008 from $14 billion in 2001.” In order to further build this point, I am going to reorganize the disagreement and the agreement and compare them together and finalize the conclusion.
As there is only 3 people in our group, it is easy to divide our job— Each of us were researching two different High Line categories. Jiwoo’s job is to research contexts and praise of the High Line. Azalea’s job is to research the features and legacy of the High Line and my job is to research the History and criticism of the High Line. Before researching, our group had a serious conversation of signing everyone work. After everyone agreed with the idea, we soon start doing our researching independently. In a nutshell, we are satisfied with the outcome and everyone did their fair share.
