Franklin Park Action Plan


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Boston, Massachusetts, USA

The Franklin Park Action Plan is an 18-month, community-driven planning effort that seeks to revitalize Boston’s Franklin Park, led by Reed Hilderbrand in collaboration with Agency Landscape and Planning and MASS Design Group.

Originally designed by Frederick Law Olmstead in 1885, Franklin Park is Boston’s largest park along the Emerald Necklace and home to vast expanses of green space, the Franklin Park Zoo, a golf course, and picnic areas. Nearly 30 years since the 1991 masterplan, the mission for this new action plan is to design a space that meets the needs of all visitors and neighbors, supports healthy ecosystems, and cultivates diverse and dedicated stewardship of the park. 

Franklin Park is adjacent to the Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan neighborhoods. The park and these neighborhoods have faced a long period of disinvestment that only in the past 30 years has started to change. MASS’s role in this planning process is to consider how the park can connect with its surrounding neighborhoods and city at large.

Our approach engages these communities and others that utilize the park through a series of community workshops, pop-up events, canvassing, and an online survey. To date, this process has reached over 6,000 people across the city of Boston. Following efforts of social distancing to limit the spread of COVID-19 in the Greater Boston area, MASS is assisting in the coordination of alternative outreach and engagement in order to maintain the transparency of the action planning process.

For more information about the project and news on upcoming events, please visit https://franklinparkactionplan.com/.

 

Project Details

42.30276, -71.086766

Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Year: 2019

Status: In Progress

Size: 527 Acres

Program: Action plan that meets the needs of all visitors and neighbors, supports healthy ecosystems, and cultivates diverse and dedicated stewardship of the park.

Services: Architecture, Planning, Urban Design, Engagement, and Partnership/User Development

Clients:
Boston Parks and Recreation, Franklin Park Coalition

Partners:
Reed Hilderbrand, Agency Landscape and Planning, Nitsch Engineering, Applied Ecological Services, Arup, HLB, James Sotillo, Faithful and Gould, OverUnder, Stephen Gray, Kathy Blaha, HR&A Advisors, Tim Marshall, David Buckley Borden, Ethan Carr, Julia Africa