Why Green Space Matters

In Massachusetts alone, Olmsted and his firm produced 2,000 designs, and much of Boston’s present-day park system can be attributed to him. Today, the city’s green space makes up 17.7 percent of its total land area, equivalent to 5,160 acres, according to a report from The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting land and creating parks.

This image of a lush, verdant city is at odds with what most people imagine when they think of one. In their minds, they see towering high-rises that touch the clouds, block after block of concrete sidewalks, and musty subway stations where trains come screeching to a halt. 

Despite this perception, Boston has a long history of green space. Considering this contradiction, it’s worth examining the relationship between Bostonians and these outdoor spaces, and ultimately, the significance they hold for the city.

How Bostonians Use Their Green Space

Boston green space encapsulates more than just the city’s parks. It includes all public urban areas that have been set aside for the purpose of recreation and which usually feature some form of natural or planted vegetation. They are athletic fields, playgrounds, greenways, squares, cemeteries, urban wilds, and other open spaces under various names. 

Ultimately, 100 percent of Boston’s 675,647 residents are within a 10-minute walking distance of a park. This level of proximity has resulted in these green spaces becoming an integral part of residents’ everyday lives. A quick walk through the Common or Public Garden on any given day reveals several ways Bostonian’s use these spaces. 

As much as resident’s tend to access these spaces independently, organizations and institutions are there to help facilitate connection too.

In addition to managing the upkeep of Boston’s green space, the Boston Parks and Recreation Department conducts cultural programming, like hosting arts and crafts workshops, park movie nights, neighborhood concert series, seasonal festivals, and other special events. They also offer a variety of healthy activities, including tennis and golf lessons, sports centers at certain parks, and various Mayor’s Cup sports tournaments.

Even amidst their regular programming, staff members are always developing innovative ways to get Bostonians out in nature. 

Program manager Steve Kruszkowski, for example, developed the city’s Hike Boston program in 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “we wanted to get people out into the parks in a socially distant manner,” he said. “After things sort of calmed down, there was a lot of demand for it to still have people come out and do it. And so, we decided to keep going with it, and it’s been a lot of fun.” 

About two to three times a month, park rangers or other parks department employees lead an hour-long walk through a different park or urban wild. Some host informal discussions, while others provide a formal tour on the historical and/or environmental features of the green space.

The 27-mile trail from the Neponset River in Mattapan to the Bunker Hill monument in Charlestown was created using the instant urban trail model, which connects pre-existing trails in a park-to-park route. Howard spent a year designing the trail with the help of volunteers.

“The dominant theme of the trail being really immersive parks and urban wilds, basically. All these spaces that kind of almost make you forget you’re in a city sometimes,” Howard said. “The final challenge of the Walking City Trail [was] finding not only the little hidden pockets of greenery in this very urbanized part of Boston, but also finding built environments that have their own charm and intrigue to them scenically.”

While people are finding new ways to utilize the city’s green space, some activities take inspiration from the past. Boston’s many community gardens and urban farms draw on the long history of urban agriculture  — the practice of cultivating and distributing food in urban areas — that emerged in the latter half of the 19th century.

With such ease of access to all of Boston’s green spaces, it could become easy for the public to take these spaces for granted. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has helped shine a light on their value. “We saw our foot traffic [in the parks] go up a lot, and I think that has had a lingering effect. I think people, especially after the pandemic, really realized how much they kind of maybe took parks for granted and how much you really rely on it in your day-to-day life,” Liz Sullivan, director of external affairs and marketing for the parks department, said.

The Benefits of Green Space

The relationship between people and parks is one of symbiosis — spending time in green space confers a number of benefits. Considering the variety and frequency with which the public utilizes these spaces, it seems like people tend to subconsciously understand the benefits.

A recent report from the Trust for Public Land — The Power of Parks to Promote Health — highlights the physical, mental, and environmental benefits that parks provide.

In terms of physical benefits, the report notes how parks serve as an ideal venue for physical activity: “Parks with active amenities and staffed programming, such as walking loops or fitness classes, are associated with significant increases in physical activity.” This can result in numerous health benefits, including reduced obesity, reduced osteoporosis, lower blood pressure, enhanced child development, and reduced risk of numerous other diseases.

When it comes to mental health, spending time in natural areas can help restore attention and reduce anxiety, depression, and stress. “It just helps me recharge my batteries. Here we are in the middle of the week on Wednesday, I have a ton of stuff to do, and I know when I’m done leading this hike and walking and talking with people, I’m going to leave here energized and I’m just going to dive into all my to-do list,” Kruszkowski said.

Another benefit the report highlights is how parks can strengthen social connection by fostering community cohesion through structured group activities and informal encounters. This is incredibly important, considering that “nearly half of Americans report feeling alone or left out sometimes or always and lacking meaningful social interactions on a daily basis.” 

A number of people that I spoke to noted the strong sense of community in their own experiences utilizing Boston’s green space.

Kruszkowski said that he often learns a lot from the people that have attended his Hike Boston program. “When I lead my hikes, I do more listening sometimes than talking … It can be a program or [I can] put a little bit more research into things that I wanted to say, but when I come out, I like to be out here and I like to listen to the people and I like to listen to the parks,” he said.

Winding its way through 17 Boston neighborhoods, the Walking City Trail makes it easier for people of different communities to connect. “There’s kind of a social cross pollination effect out on the trail too, especially for group hiking events, where people have come from all sorts of different places and lives to just sort of share this experience of walking together,” Howard said. 

The Fenway Victory Gardens also provide an opportunity to connect and learn. “I always talk about it being a sort of microcosm of society and a microcosm of the city of Boston, because you do get a lot of people who are from many different backgrounds. You hear a lot of different languages spoken in the garden, and you see a real diverse population,” Johnson said. “When I talk about why I believe so strongly in community gardens, and why I believe so strongly in this garden, it’s because there’s a lot that we can all learn from each other within these gardens. I mean, when we all get together, we share the common ground of gardening.”

According to Zachary Nowak, a food and environmental historian, Americans have few places where they can come together and participate in common activities. Green spaces are just one of these few open areas.

The Climate Challenge Facing Boston's Green Space

The effects of climate change — some of which are already being seen — pose the greatest threat to Boston’s green space. Not only is the quality of these spaces being negatively affected, but residents’ ability to access and utilize them is too, which ultimately diminishes their benefits. While green spaces are threatened by the effects of climate change, they can also help the city become more resilient to it by alleviating the worst of its effects. 

More severe and intense storms, coupled with sea level rise, has contributed to the erosion and flooding of coastal parks. This means that certain parks and their infrastructure, like basketball courts and jungle gyms, are inaccessible until flood waters recede. 

Some of these parks, including Langone and McConnell, have been renovated with climate resiliency solutions in mind, while others are in the pipeline, like Moakley and Ryan Playground in Charlestown. These renovations can help prevent further inland flooding by cutting off flood pathways and creating more effective stormwater drainage systems. Rooted in feasibility, these solutions seek to adapt to climate change, rather than aim to stop it altogether.

The Stone Living Lab is a partnership between different academic, nonprofit, city, state, and federal agencies that conducts research on and tests nature-based approaches to improve coastal resilience in Boston Harbor. One approach they’ve already implemented is the cobble berm, a gravel ridge built along the shoreline of sand beaches. These berms dynamically move with storms, prevent erosion, and provide a habitat for living creatures. Additionally, next spring, the lab will start installing living sea wall panels — which mimic natural habitat structures – on sea walls in Boston, effectively turning this gray infrastructure green. 

The National Parks Boston Civilian Conservation Corps, which started in September, is also working to develop climate resilience in the city’s three national parks. One of the three major projects they’re currently working on is creating a climate resilient plant palette that can survive extreme weather conditions. “[We look] at carbon sequestration potential, or is it friendly to pollinators, is it friendly to bird species, does it provide shade when we’re looking at urban heat island effect, and coming up with a list for the park to use for future plantings,” program coordinator Rachel Muller said.

The unpredictable nature of climate change means that institutions partnering to protect these spaces must be flexible in their response. One example can be seen in Martin’s Park, which opened in 2019. “We kind of were building it on a little bit of an outdated sea level rise estimate. And so halfway through the project, we had to raise all the walkways and make all these different improvements, kind of halfway through the design, to make sure that it would be protected during a storm surge,” Sullivan said.

Challenges also come with appropriately maintaining green infrastructure. “If we’re going to build this infrastructure, we also need to have enough people to maintain it and to train them,” Sullivan said. “They might know how to run a mower, but they might not really understand the green infrastructure aspects of it and how to care and maintain for those aspects.”

Despite the daunting challenges that climate change brings, there is reason for optimism. In the mid-1970s, community organizations spearheaded the clean up of the then polluted Boston Harbor and Spectacle Island. This has made it a relatively recent “huge environmental success,” Shoer said. “The nice thing is that we can look out on the harbor and be like, [the islands] they’re there. We did it once. We did a really innovative thing. And the group of people involved are still alive, they’re still here, which means we can do it [repeat the process again] quickly.”

What’s Next?

Going forward, the city has plans to improve two of its largest parks: the Boston Common and Franklin Park. Last year, the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, in conjunction with its contracted design firms, completed and released the Boston Common Master Plan and the Franklin Park Action Plan. 

The vision for these spaces aims to serve the needs of Boston residents and park users, while also protecting the ecology of these spaces, so that these shared resources can be sustained for long-term use. The ultimate goal of these plans is to strengthen the connection of these parks to the city and community.

While many people do not think of cities as green, Boston proves this assumption otherwise. This can be seen in the acreage, regular use, and continued structural improvements to its green spaces.

However, resident’s lack of identification with the city’s green spaces can inhibit their further conservation and curb the benefits they provide. This was highlighted by Shoer when discussing the Boston Harbor Islands: “A challenge that has been the perennial challenge for [protecting] the islands has been making the islands as much a part of Boston’s identity as Fenway Park.” Greater identification can motivate citizens to promote, preserve, and invest in these spaces.

Embracing the idea of Boston as a green city will not only encourage the protection of its infrastructure amidst climate change, but will also strengthen its social fabric in a time of increased division. 

“One thing that Frederick Law Olmsted observed about public parks was that not only are they spaces where people can come together, but they are places where people can see people coming together too,” Howard said. “This was something that was especially cogent to observe when he was working after the Civil War. And cities today are still very much afflicted by racial and economic segregation.” 

This was emphasized by a sign at Fairsted: “[Olmsted] wanted to encourage people to mingle, to promote a feeling of community in a city divided by differences.” Green spaces can help bridge the gap divisions create. When other efforts fail, parks always have and will bring people together.