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Introduction
The
Boston Metropolitan Park Report of 1893 is a big, bold plan in a small
book. Commissioned by the Massachusetts
state legislature, and authored by journalist Sylvester Baxter and
landscape architect Charles Eliot, it offered a new vision of how open
space and parks could be a part of the rapidly expanding metropolitan area.
It proposed that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchase specific
privately-owned sites for the sole purpose of permanently reserving public
open space and parks, a regional approach to land use planning that was
virtually unknown at that time. While the so-called Emerald Necklace park
system, developed in large measure through the planning and design of the
well-known landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., had recently been
developed in the city of Boston,
the Baxter-Eliot plan represented something new. It dramatically expanded
the scale of park planning to an area more than ten miles in radius from
downtown Boston.
This
plan was likely the first of its kind in the nation, and certainly the
first implemented. In the 1890s, zoning did not yet exist and landscape
architecture and city planning were just emerging as new fields of inquiry
and practice. Baxter and Eliot's report to the Metropolitan Park
Commissioners is frequently cited, and recognized as historically
significant, in the early development of city planning, yet it has never
been the subject of an in-depth analysis. This website project is intended
to bring greater exposure to the plan and to stimulate discussion about its
relevance for city planning today.
Please
select a link on the left hand side of the page to navigate the site and to
learn more about the plan.
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