Franklin Park Action Plan

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/.