Running the Course: Unifying Franklin Park One Step at a Time
Harvard GSD Department of Landscape Architecture, Core II
Instructor: Craig Douglas
Franklin Park is fragmented. The city’s new master plan further splits the space into eight different parts that borrow names from the Olmstead plan and cling to the original boundary markers, but the effect is altogether different. One cannot move comfortably from Refectory Hill to the Playstead without hitting a paywall or circumventing the golf course. This is not a unified park, nor is it explicitly public.
Though much of Franklin Park currently leaves something to be desired, the experience of a large park can be a valuable one. Franklin Park offers an immersive interiority into nature that would otherwise be inaccessible for many residents surrounding the park. Franklin Park offers a common outdoor experience for residents of Roxbury, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, and Forest Hills alike, fostering a sense of community in the greater Boston area. Additionally, I believe there is value in revitalizing and investing in existing landscapes and communities. Elements like the cross-country course, the zoo, and the playgrounds offer key programming for the surrounding neighborhoods and Boston at large.
My goal in this project is to revitalize Franklin Park through program by augmenting the unique and world-renowned cross-country course that still manages to bring athletes from all over the world and bring the park together for a few days per year. The path of the course is the catalyst for a new range and scale of social spaces, vegetation revitalizing strategies, and land forming interventions designed to stitch the park together. It creates the rhythm of the park.
The aspiration of this project is to evoke further enthusiasm, excitement, and interest in Franklin Park as a community space for the surrounding neighborhoods and the greater Boston area. Race Day, and the landscape network it supports, renders the park truly public.
To view the entire project, please visit www.paceyourself.cargo.site