Environment

The Camden Highline is a charity which aims to transform the disused railway viaduct running from Camden Town to King’s Cross into a new park and green corridor for wildlife. The Highline will be a mile long and varies in width from 4 to 20 meters.

The London Wildlife Trust undertook an Ecology assessment in 2021, available here. They found that it has potential as a wildlife corridor, but it’s dominated by sycamore and buddleia scrub, which are ubiquitous along rail-sides in Camden and do not provide the variation needed for a wider range of wildlife. We intend to change that.

Piet Oudolf is leading the planting design for the Camden Highline. His eponymous practice is world-renowned for a thoughtful attention to the details of the plant structure, flowering season, and growth patterns over years. With this naturalistic approach, Oudolf creates stable, resilient, and striking landscapes. Oudolf has experience working in postindustrial sites like the Highline, and his approach evokes the many layers of these places. Working with grasses, perennials, trees, and understory plants, Oudolf has created a planting palette that is unique to the Camden Highline. His design is inspired by the woodlands, productive gardens, meadows and hedgerows which dot and cross the British countryside, so that a visit to the Highline takes you through a series of distinct ecosystems and experiences. The design responds to the recommendations made by the London Wildlife Trust by maximising micro-topography to provide natural niches, providing wild-life accessible water sources and installing a range of nesting and roosting sites.

As a new wildlife corridor in the heart of Camden, the Highline is an opportunity to introduce visitors of all ages to the urban wildlife than surrounds them, and the actions visitors can take to improve the ecological value of the spaces they control. An outdoor nature classroom provides space for local school visits and an expansion of the Highline’s educational workshops.

The Camden Highline’s approach to sustainability is based on circular economy principles and whole life cycle impacts. The vast majority of the material used in the project is the existing viaduct, with new interventions designed to tread lightly on it to minimise the materials used. The supporting structure under the walkways will use railway sleepers, reclaimed where possible, which have a high potential for further reuse. Benches, and other park furniture will use reclaimed industrial warehouse beams, locking in embodied carbon. The Camden Green Loop, a four-mile walking route linking Camden Town, King’s Cross and Euston is also core to the Highline’s ambitions. It will connect these town centres to each other and their local neighbourhoods, and help those who live and work around the loop make micro-interventions to improve their environmental and ecological footprint.

Along with the ecological benefits, the Camden Highline also provides:

• A new global attraction for London, helping it emerge from the pandemic and strengthening its profile as one of the world’s leading visitor destinations.

• New local green space for 20,000 people

• Health and wellbeing benefits worth £10.9m over the project’s lifetime.

• 200 construction jobs and 116 new long-term jobs

• 3 million visitors a year, spending £60m in Camden’s businesses

• A new visitor economy quarter, linking the emerging destination and transport links of King’s Cross with the existing visitor appeal of Camden Town.

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