Franklin Park Action Plan
The Franklin Park Action Plan is a bold, community-led vision to restore and revitalize Boston’s largest park, creating a more inclusive, accessible, and ecologically resilient space for generations to come.
Led by Reed Hilderbrand in collaboration with MASS and Agency Landscape and Planning, the 18-month planning process centered community input to reimagine Franklin Park—a 527-acre landscape originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1885. As Boston’s largest park within the Emerald Necklace, Franklin Park is home to the Franklin Park Zoo, a golf course, picnic areas, and vital green space for surrounding neighborhoods.
More than three decades after the last action plan in 1991, this renewed effort sought to meet the needs of today’s visitors and neighbors, while restoring the park’s ecological health and reinforcing the stewardship of the communities who have long cared for it. Adjacent to Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, Franklin Park and its neighboring communities have experienced long-standing disinvestment—conditions the Action Plan acknowledges and aims to address through inclusive design and equitable access.
Agency Landscape and Planning
MASS’s role focused on strengthening connections between the park and its surrounding neighborhoods, ensuring the planning process was inclusive, accessible, and deeply rooted in community voices. Outreach was conducted in seven languages and included workshops, neighborhood meetings, pop-up events, canvassing, and both digital and physical engagement—resulting in over 26,000 community touchpoints. Even during the early disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the team adapted engagement strategies to maintain transparency and broad participation throughout the planning process.
As an off-shoot of the city’s Imagine Boston 2030 initiative, 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 the years of disinvestment. Recommendations within the Plan are practical and action oriented, focusing on improving social and ecological health.
Agency Landscape and Planning
The Plan promotes a return to Olmsted's original principles without displacing its evolved significance to current users—linking people to the power of natural phenomena and cultivating access to open space and outdoor recreation in the belief that these enhance our daily lives, improve public health, and promote civic discourse.
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 have informed design recommendations for the park's renewed stewardship and continued evolution.
In recognition of the team’s work, the Franklin Park Action Plan received the 2023 ASLA Professional Award of Excellence in Analysis and Planning.
