Re-investing in a Legacy Landscape: The Franklin Park Action Plan

Award of Excellence

Analysis and Planning

Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Reed Hilderbrand LLC with Agency Landscape and Planning and MASS Design
Client: Boston Parks and Recreation Department

Protect, Enhance, Create: Evolving the Park’s Legacy

Franklin Park is a critical and beloved cultural and recreation resource for the surrounding neighborhoods, which have stewarded it over many decades.

Image Credit: Sahar Coston-Hardy, Casey Preston/White Birch Media, Design Team, Franklin Park Coalition
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Looking Back to Look Forward: Park DNA

Aspects of Olmsted's original design have disappeared, but key elements remain and continue to structure park use and experience in important ways.

Image Credit: Design Team, Missy Harvey, United States Department of the Interior
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Investment as Equity: Franklin Park as a Critical Cultural & Public Health Resource

Despite significant disinvestment, the park continues to play a critical role in the public health and well-being of its neighbors.

Image Credit: Design Team; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Boston Area Research Initiative
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Reach Out, Welcome All: Engaging Diverse Communities

A layered outreach approach allowed the team to engage over 26,000 neighbors and hundreds of organizations through in-person and digital means.

Image Credit: Design Team
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The Five Big Ideas: Recommendations Overview

Team analysis and community priorities informed five ‘Big Ideas’ that structured the development of detailed plan recommendations.

Image Credit: Design Team
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Big Idea #1: Make Connections & Activate Edges

From inside the park to the facing neighborhood, edge recommendations improve connections and safety while maintaining the park’s historic identity.

Image Credit: Design Team, Sahar Coston-Hardy
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Peabody Circle: Make a Place at the Edge to Welcome All

Dominated by vehicles today, reconfigured circulation expands park space, provides flexible community use, and elevates pedestrian visitor experience.

Image Credit: Design Team, Google Street View, Swarthmore, Millicent Harvey, MapQuest, Boston Voyager
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Big Idea #2: Clarify Movement

Improved parking and vehicular, multi-modal, and trail circulation promotes equitable access to park destinations and quiet moments alike.

Image Credit: Design Team, Sahar Coston-Hardy
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The Circuit Loop: Restore a Multi-Modal Path

The original circulation used two park loops and separated modes of travel. Their restoration establishes safe and inclusive multimodal movement.

Image Credit: Design Team, Google Street View
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Big Idea #3: Amplify Magnet Destinations

Renewing much-loved centers of activity and thoughtfully expanding programs ensures that all sides of the park fully serve gatherings large and small.

Image Credit: Design Team, Sahar Coston-Hardy
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The Playstead: Protect the Right to Recreate

Recreation, performance, and gathering space with enhanced durability and resilience enable The Playstead to better support its many activities.

Image Credit: Design Team, Google Street View
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The Bear Dens: Reimagine Historic Ruins & Design for Flexible Use

Historic ruins contribute to park character and charm; recommendations for their future include stabilization, restoration, and imaging new uses.

Image Credit: Design Team, Historic New England, Leslie Jones
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Big Idea #4: Unify the Park

Restoration and management of the park's eight ecological zones increases climate resilience, and stabilizes an invaluable public health resource.

Image Credit: Design Team, Missy Harvey, City of Boston
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Ellicottdale: Increase Diversity at Woodland Edges

Transitions between woodland and open areas are used to slow stormwater and provide habitat, species diversity, and seasonal beauty.

Image Credit: Design Team, Strictly Medicinal, Yvonne L. Bordelon, University of New Hampshire
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Redirect, Collect & Clean: Strengthen Water Systems

Introducing soft infrastructure and right-sizing piped drainage improve water quality and urban flooding as stormwater moves towards a restored pond.

Image Credit: Design Team, Missy Harvey
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Big Idea #5: Build Capacity & Enable Change

A new park administrator will oversee and maintain relationships with city and community partners to ensure equitable and responsible implementation.

Image Credit: Design Team
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“

The applicant recognized and embraced the park’s greatest resources: its people, landscape, and history, to develop a plan that rejuvenates the park while respecting and protecting its value to adjacent communities. This thoughtful plan honors the park’s design heritage while engaging and expanding its users without reinvention. The design renews ecological systems and heightens the unique ways adjacent communities have adapted the park to meet their needs. It also represents a respectful intervention considering the integration of natural systems and adaptation to climate change.

”

- 2023 Awards Jury

Project Credits

Agency Landscape + Planning, Core Team—Outreach and Engagement

MASS Design Group, Core Team—Urban Design

ARUP, Mobility & Transportation

Ethan Carr, Landscape History

ETM Associates, Maintenance & Operations

Grayscale Collaborative, Equity & Inclusion

HLB, Lighting Design

Julia Africa, Public Health

Landwise, Economics

Nitsch Engineering, Stormwater Management

Olsson, Soil Science

OverUnder, Visual Identity & Wayfinding

RES, Ecology

Siteworks, Cost Estimating

Tree Specialists, Inc., Arboriculture

John Kett, ASLA, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architect

Kristin Frederickson, ASLA, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architect

Lydia Gikas Cook, ASLA, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architect

Gary Hilderbrand, FASLA, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architect

Eric Kramer, FASLA, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architect

Echo Chen, Associate ASLA, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architect

Danica Liongson, Associate ASLA, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architect

Jackson Plumlee, Associate ASLA, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Landscape Architect

Yuqing Zhang, Reed Hilderbrand LLC Designer

Project Statement

Franklin Park has long been a beloved center of recreation, gathering, and discovery for Boston’s most diverse communities. Emerging from the Imagine Boston 2030 Plan, the Action Plan is founded on equal respect for the park's historic fabric, ecological systems, and the strong community of contemporary users who have stewarded it through years of disinvestment. Focused on issues of equity, ecological resilience, climate change, and cultural significance, its aspirations are forward-looking and visionary, but based in practical and action-oriented recommendations. It advocates for thoughtfully guided, community-driven improvements implemented through equitable investment to enable this treasured park to do what it does now, only better.

Project Narrative

Background Frederick Law Olmsted’s plan for Franklin Park conceived of an expansive New England landscape where all were welcome to enjoy the benefits of recreation and experience nature within the city. Incremental changes have obscured this design. New leaseholders and car traffic split the park into pieces, making it hard to get to, move through, and experience. While years of deferred maintenance have left the park's physical fabric and ecological systems in severe decline, its neighbors — a rich convergence of cultures also underserved by their city — have become its strongest advocates and stewards. Intent With $28 million in City funding and a maintenance endowment in place, the Boston Parks and Recreation Department engaged the design team in the creation of the Franklin Park Action Plan—the first comprehensive plan for Boston's largest park in nearly 30 years. Supported by multidisciplinary consultants with wide-ranging specializations, the team united around an understanding that renewing the park requires honoring its design heritage, engaging and expanding its users, renewing its ecological systems, and reconnecting with surrounding communities.

The Action Plan does not seek to reinvent the park by packing it with revenue-driven program or to transform its design, character, or original intention. Instead, it embraces the ways adjacent communities have adopted and adapted the park to meet their needs and the way people live in cities today. Recommendations are practical and action oriented, focusing on improving social and ecological health.

The Plan promotes a return to Olmsted's original principals without displacement of its evolved significance and current users — linking people to the power of natural phenomena and cultivating access to open space and outdoor recreation, both in the belief that they enhance our daily lives, improve public health, and promote civic discourse. Engagement & Design Process The team implemented a layered approach to community engagement to reach all of the park’s neighborhoods and emphasized the practices of meeting people where they are, uncovering rich information about the park’s past and present, and working with local community groups. Outreach methods were deployed in seven languages, including workshops, neighborhood meetings, surveys, pop-up events, and neighborhood canvassing, even amid the challenges of the pandemic. Campaigns via a project website, email blasts, social media, and park signs bolstered awareness of the process and encouraged participation, resulting in over 26,000 touchpoints. Ongoing participation data was analyzed to prioritize broad and diverse representation. The extensive engagement inputs and the team’s deep analysis of the park’s history, communities, and land has shaped five primary recommendations for the park's renewed stewardship and continued evolution:

Make Connections & Activate Edges Clarify Movement Amplify Magnet Destinations Unify the Park Build Capacity & Enable Change

Implementation priorities include anti-displacement, equitable procurement, governance, and funding strategies aligned with the community context. The Plan emphasizes continued community engagement, strengthened partnerships, civic stewardship, and relies on effective coordination amongst a new City Task Force to ensure broader goals and initiatives support plan priorities.