Madrid Río, a six-mile long park in the heart of Madrid, replaces the blight left over from a highway that once disconnected neighborhoods and reclaims a neglected waterfront.
Michael Kimmelman reports:
"On my way from the park one day I came across Marisa Álvarez, a physical therapist, who told me that her commute from Móstoles, a sprawling, hard-hit suburb to the southwest of the city, took nearly an hour and a half each way before the new metro arrived. Now, it's 45 minutes. The metro had changed her daily life, she said.
'This is like new lungs for us,' is how Pilar López described what the new park has changed in hers. At 73, she said she has lived for more than a half-century in an apartment in a housing project nearby, suffering the fumes and noise from the highway."
FULL STORY: In Madrid’s Heart, Park Blooms Where a Freeway Once Blighted
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