Emerald Networks; Reviving the Legacy of City Parks

Many of the country’s best urban park systems often owe a significant debt of gratitude to an often forgotten foundational legacy parks plan. Whether Burnham’s vision for Chicago or Christmas’ foundational plan for Raleigh, each legacy plan brings with it a whole host of challenges and opportunities.

In 2015 at Northeastern University’s Gallery 360, a team of passionate park planners at Sasaki, led by Gina Ford and Laura Marett, curated an exhibition on this topic called “Emerald Networks; Reviving the Legacy of City Parks”. The exhibition explored six cities with historic park legacies – Washington DC, Raleigh (NC), Hartford (CT), Boston (MA), Minneapolis (MN) and Chicago (IL). Each case study featured included an overview of the foundational vision, its existing condition and a series of contemporary projects aimed at evolving this legacy to 21st century needs.

The exhibition – sponsored by Sasaki in collaboration with the Humanities Center, the Northeastern Center for the Arts, the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, and the College of Arts, Media and Design – led to a publication that continues to gather new case study cities over time.