Two decades ago, no artist would have depicted Jersey City like this. Hudson County was resistant to glamorization. Instead, artists who engaged with the town— photographers Ed Fausty and Shandor Hassan, for instance—favored a stark realist approach so keenly and meticulously observed that it attained the alien quality of dystopic science fiction.

When advocates for Jersey City’s Harsimus Cove/Sixth Street Embankment look up at the old rail structure, they see the prospect for an East of the Hudson High Line – albeit with nuanced ecological features – but after more than a decade of court battles and an estimated $1 million in legal fees expended by the city, is that vision doomed to be pie in the sky?