Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston
The Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston is an existing for over 100 years, the system of national parks, parks, parkways and roads under the control of the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR ) in and around Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. The term is used by the DCR for the common description of the area: " On the whole, the Metropolitan Park System is currently suitable to be included as a separate entry in the National Register of Historic Places ". The DCR maintains the Bureau of State Parks and Recreation a separate department for city parks and recreation areas, a separate department taking care of the other state parks in Massachusetts. Direct design and maintenance tasks for the Parkways and roads within the system are perceived by the DCR Bureau of Engineering.
The park system consists of coastal reserves and beaches such as the Revere Beach, river basins along the three major rivers such as the Charles River Reservation and forest protected areas such as the Blue Hills Reservation in the south of the city. In addition, there are parks that have a relation to local history, in Lynn and Roxbury. The DCR also manages a system of parkways connecting the urban population with the green areas. Among them are both busy streets such as Jamaicaway in Boston and back roads in uninhabited areas such as the Blue Hills Reservation Parkways.
History
The improvement of undeveloped land, adverse developments and contaminated land in and around Boston was first conceived and promoted by landscape architect Charles Eliot and the Boston newspaper editor and city planners Sylvester Baxter. Eliot had gone to study with Frederick Law Olmsted and took over in 1893 the leadership of Olmsted's design firm, which had been responsible among other things for the design of Central Park in Manhattan. Together with Eliot Olmsted had designed the Emerald Necklace in Boston, a system of connected parks and waterways. Eliot played an important role in the founding of today Trustees of Reservations and the Metropolitan Parks Commission in the 1890s. He had the vision, the individual park networks in the Boston area continues to expand.
The 1892 approved by the Massachusetts General Court Metropolitan Park Commission was at the time of its creation from Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Philip A. Chase and William B. de las Casas. The Commission Baxter as Secretary and Eliot as a landscape architect. The first five areas that were acquired by the Commission for the system in 1893, were Beaver Brook Reservation, Blue Hills Reservation, Hemlock Gorge Reservation, Middlesex Fells Reservation and Stony Brook Reservation. Around the year 1900, the system included several already built or planned Parkways and the first coastal reserves ( Lynn Shore Reservation, Nantasket Beach, Quincy Shore Reservation, Revere Beach and other reserves along the Charles River, Mystic River and Neponset River) were added.
In 1919, the Commission was renamed the Metropolitan District Commission ( MDC), after it was merged with the Metropolitan Water and Sewer Commission. During the next 80 years, the MDC became increasingly politicized. After a series of wrong decisions within the Commission, which led to the pollution of Boston Harbor in the 1970s, the city of Quincy sued in 1982, the MDC and the Boston Water and Sewer Commission in an uncontrolled and systematic pollution of urban waterfronts. This procedure was followed by other actions of the Conservation Law Foundation and finally the federal government of the United States, which in the end that caused the Boston Harbor had to be extensively purified by court order. The lawsuit forced the former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis to extract the departments for fresh and waste water treatment from the MDC, which led to the founding of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority in 1985. The allegations of political corruption and control of the MDC pursued further, while a reduction in income due to the spin-off of the water and wastewater departments led to the fact that the state of Massachusetts had to invest more tax dollars in the MDC. This led to calls for the dismantling of the MDC, which finally took place in 2003. The Metropolitan Park System and other activities of the MDC were transferred to the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management to form the present Department of Conservation and Recreation.
In 2009, a study to investigate the transferability of the managed by the DCR Parkways to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation has begun. Already transferred all previously managed by the DCR bridges that are not meant for pedestrians.
Parks and reserves
The following table shows the parks and reserves, which are currently managed by the DCR Department of City parks and recreational areas.