The High Line; Re-purpose with a Purpose

The High Line is a very unique structure to New York-allowing us New Yorkers to rise above the crowded bustle of the city streets without completely lifting off to the precarious heights of the skyscrapers.  That “modest extra altitude [can make] for a profoundly different peripatetic perspective” not typically experienced in the city (Lopate).  The High Line is a re-engineered space; what once was a space for machine transportation is now a space for pedestrians to gain “heightened sensory experiences that lead to the ‘user-oriented’ experience of walking and perusing the site” (Martin 45).
The High Line enables pedestrians to melt into the multidimensional and create a unique hyperreal experience.  Besides the obvious freedom of wandering where one wishes (straight through end to end, starting from the middle, laying on the tanning chairs for hours), the High Line has options for experiencing an audio and visual landscape, as well.  With apps such as the Gait, pedestrians can create a musical experience intertwined with their visual and spacial one, creating a unique dimension of hyper-reality for each visitor.  This way, the High Line introduces another type of architecture that you create yourself while walking through both historical and modern buildings; audio architecture.
The High Line really is a great example of New York architecture and our love of re-purposing everything we can get our hands on.  Take the whole of the Meatpacking District, for example.  The area still exhibits a grungy, industrial feel of meat packaging, and yet it is now the location for some of the most glamorous spots in the city.  Another great example is what used to be the Church of the Holy Communion (located on 6th ave and 20th st) which was re-purposed into a nightclub with a scandalous past, and now, currently exists as a tourist-frequented clothing store.  As Philip Lopate would say, these once grand symbols of our past have now become a “consumable spectacle” (Lopate).  Though New York City is relatively young, buildings can still embody several generations of history, each very different from the next.  Even my old apartment [apparently] used to be a brothel (which actually makes sense when you see how tiny all the rooms are).
This re-purposing of architecture into “consumable spectacles” is an interesting phenomena to ponder when taking the added dimensions of the hyper-real space.  When we re-purpose spaces does that mean we change all of their dimensions?  Will there be a point in time when we can build off of augmented reality the same way we can build off of a church or a railway?  Right now it seems somewhat preposterous that we could, but perhaps we just have to focus on re-purposing our imaginations.