The greenway network along the Mystic and Malden Rivers offers relief from bustling city life while simultaneously connecting you to it. The greenway creates connections between Medford, Malden, Everett, and Somerville, and links them all to Boston itself. Imagine if this network were fully connected with safe or protected areas for everyone to walk or bike. The good news? There have been so many recent improvements that not only move the greenway network closer to a full connection but encourage activity and appreciation of natural resources.

One of Boston’s lesser-known public shorelines is also its longest uninterrupted stretch of accessible coast. From Castle Island to Savin Hill Cove, you can explore six continuous miles of harbor views that include the historic Fort Independence, multiple public beaches, Moakley Park (the second largest park in Boston), the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and the University of Massachusetts Boston Campus.  This inviting stretch is already part of the Emerald Network, but is in desperate need of better and safer connections. 

For this greenway story we spoke with Janna Cohen-Rosenthal, Executive Director of the Franklin Park Coalition, and Arealus Pough, Community Engagement Manager at Lena Park Community Development Corporation, to learn more about opportunities and challenges for the City of Boston's historic Franklin Park as it becomes a focus for several modern planning projects.  

Beacon Street, from Audubon Circle to Cleveland Circle, is a pleasant, tree-lined boulevard that over the past year has been incorporated into our wider vision of the Emerald Network. Originally laid out in 1850, Beacon Street has long served as a busy connector between Brookline and Boston.  Thanks to Brookline resident Jules Milner-Brage and the Friends of Beacon Street Bridleway, an exciting vision for a safer, multimodal street is starting to take shape.

From Piers Park to Wood Island Bay and Constitution Beach, the East Boston Greenway is a two-mile linear park that connects people of all ages to East Boston neighborhood amenities, Boston’s largest salt marsh, and other important public waterfront areas. One of our very first Greenway Stories explored the success and challenges of this greenway -- you can read it here.

For this story we sat down with Michelle Moon, the newly hired Greenway Coordinator for Friends of the East Boston Greenway (FoEBG), to talk about her role, ongoing challenges for greenways, and how partnerships and programs are helping to activate the East Boston Greenway in 2019.

If you build it, they will ride. That’s what the Baker-Polito Administration is hoping for with the addition of the Silver Line 3-Chelsea (SL3), newly opened last April. The SL3 offers an efficient one-seat connection to key destinations, including the Seaport and South Station, luring would-be car commuters and taking some of the strain off of five already overcrowded bus routes serving nearly 7,000 daily passengers in Revere and Chelsea. But while the SL3 grabbed headlines in Boston, locals celebrated an additional win in the form of the Chelsea Greenway, a new 0.65-mile shared-use path running parallel to the SL3 bus priority lane.

Route Options, Fairmount to Mattapan Greenway (click image to enlarge).

Southwest Boston Community Development Corporation (SWBCDC) is an Emerald Network Greenway Partner actively working to expand access to open space for residents in Hyde Park.

This summer, with the help of María de la Luz Lobos Martínez, a graduate student in landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Emerald Network embarked on a feasibility study to help SWBCDC demonstrate the potential of the Fairmount to Mattapan Greenway.

The greenway is a direct effort to take action on the path proposed in the Go Boston 2030 plan and to supplement service improvements along the MBTA commuter rail Fairmount Line-- a goal of the 2014 Boston Plan’s Fairmount Indigo Corridor Plan.   

Bostonians might be surprised to learn that we are not the only ones with an “Emerald Necklace”. The City of Cleveland, Ohio boasts a ring of parks with the same name. Intrigued, my wife Ann Marie and I set out to discover how Cleveland’s Emerald Necklace matched up with the original. Exploring Cleveland by bike seemed like the best way to go about it.

We recently co-hosted an open house with the Mystic River Watershed Association and Stoss Landscape Urbanism. Our goal was to solicit feedback on the proposed Charlestown Lower Mystic Greenway which would connect existing sections of the Boston Harborwalk and provide increased open space and waterfront access.

In this guest post, Malden resident Monique Ching provides her impressions of the Malden River Walk, and Mystic River Watershed Association's Greenways Director Amber Christoffersen responds.