When people look back on 2016 sometime in the near future, one way they may view it is as the "Year of Planted Bridges." There's the ongoing saga of Thomas Heatherwicks' Garden Bridge in London but also a bevy of proposals that incorporate this architectural element.

[Heatherwick Studio's Garden Bridge | All images courtesy the respective architects, unless noted otherwise]

Heatherwick's proposal under former London Mayor Boris Johnson is now in limbo under the administration of Mayor Sadiq Khan, who is anything but in love with the project. Some reports ask if the £185 million bridge is "dead in the water," while some architects have proposed alternatives, namely Allies and Morrison's suggestion to turn the existing Blackfriars crossing into Blackfriars bridge garden.
[Allies and Morrison's Blackfriars Bridge Garden]

Even if Heatherwick's high-profile proposal is mired in problems (most of it around funding), the idea of a planted bridge is desirable, enough to elicit such proposals as Blackfriars. I attribute the sudden urge to plant trees on bridges to New York's High Line, which is basically a 1.5-mile-long planted bridge traversing 22 blocks on Manhattan's West Side. Other cities want to replicate the effects of the successful project, but not all cities have a piece of derelict elevated infrastructure in an ideal location ? so far only Sydney has made the jump to reality. So another route for cities to go is bridges,...