April 2019 - Parks & Recreation - 60

M OA K L E Y PA R K

Roadway connection via Columbia Road, once envisioned to
be the final link in Frederick Law
Olmsted's Emerald Necklace, connects Moakley Park to an incredible
network of parks that serve many
of Boston's neighborhoods. Combined with Carson Beach and the
South Boston/Harbor Point waterfront, Moakley Park could be part
of Boston's longest, most diverse
and most spectacular stretch of waterfront parks. In 2018, the Boston
Parks and Recreation Department
launched the Moakley Park Vision
Plan to transform and take advantage of this site's significant social
and environmental potential as part
of a larger harborwide vision for climate resiliency tied to social equity.
The Moakley Park Vision Plan
builds on Boston's harborwide planning for coastal resilience, set forth
by Mayor Walsh. With 36 inches of
sea-level rise, Moakley Park, combined with Fort Point Channel, becomes the flood pathway for portions
of the city's South End and Roxbury
neighborhoods during a 1 percent

storm event, like a 100-year flood. By
elevating areas of the park and integrating those areas into a flood-protection berm, Moakley Park can become an important component of a
citywide strategy to protect neighborhoods and critical assets from future
risk. In fact, the park is particularly
important to the city's resiliency strategy because of the highly vulnerable
populations impacted by this flood
pathway. Directly adjacent to Moakley Park are two low-income housing
projects, one of which is the oldest
existing in Boston. The residents of
these areas are subject to significant
financial strain, which would be exacerbated by future flood risks. Protecting these neighborhoods is a priority
for the region and the city.
The re-envisioned Moakley Park
takes on impending climate change
threats, upgrades existing facilities
and adds new programs and activities to attract new users. In addition,
it creates a more ecologically diverse and sustainable landscape and
explicitly addresses issues of equity
and access to the harbor for all.

The long-term vision
transitions the current
roadway between
Moakley Park and
Carson Beach into a
waterfront promenade,
safely linking the park
plaza and the beach.

Parks & Recreation

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Engagement Process
How the city empowers residents
to become active participants in the
co-creation and continued stewardship of Moakley Park is an important
element of the vision plan's future success. The city and the design team, led
by Stoss Landscape Urbanism, held a
multifaceted community-engagement
process throughout the duration of
the project. Stoss and its partners,
ONE Architecture and Urbanism
and Nitsch Engineering, worked with
the parks department to generate a
community engagement strategy that
would gather community input on
the future of the park, help develop
a vision plan that addresses major
community concerns and interests,
and garner support for the final vision
plan. The strategy was broad based
and geared toward getting input from
a variety of Boston residents. Presentations, visual communication and
physical models were utilized across
multiple engagement strategies to
communicate ideas to a diverse audience. The team also collaborated with
city agencies and officials to begin

April 2019 - Parks & Recreation

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