Our Mission
Creating a Greener Greater Boston for Future Generations
In Partnership with the Barr Foundation
The Solomon Foundation champions the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s public green spaces and their unique contribution to the quality of urban life. Our mission is to provide a complete and connected network of beautiful parks and greenways connecting people to open spaces. Founded by David Solomon and Herb Nolan in 2005, the Solomon Foundation seeks to frame visionary yet practical projects and help get them built. Working alongside and supporting diverse partners across many governmental agencies and neighborhoods, we help drive greenway projects forward.
A Greener Greater Boston (AGGB) is a program of the Solomon Foundation in partnership with the Barr Foundation. AGGB was started in 2016 to scale up the greenway and placemaking work of the Solomon Foundation.
You can learn more about some of our current projects below.
FEATURED PROJECTS
With our partners, we prioritize projects that are part of a system of shared paths and parks; serve dense urban neighborhoods in need of open space; are beautiful, well-loved, and well cared-for; and enhance the health and well-being of people and the environment. Here is a selection of innovative projects made possible through the collaboration of dedicated public and private partners.
The Mystic River Watershed Association, is leading a comprehensive, community-driven plan and design for Blessing of the Bay Park and DCR is building initial park improvements.
The proposed Charlesgate paths and parks will reconnect the Charles River Basin with the Back Bay Fens and reclaim an area overshadowed by highway infrastructure since the mid-20th century.
The half-mile Clippership Connector path, named for the Clipperships once built on these shores, will form a critical link in a regional trail system reaching from the Mystic River to the Charles River and the northwestern suburbs.
The Western most section of Newton’s Commonwealth Ave. Carriageway was reconfigured mid-century leaving a dangerous stretch of road. The City of Newton is leading designing a restoration of the greenway.
Our Process
Listen and Collaborate Around a Shared Vision
Working with public and private partners, the Solomon Foundation identifies projects that will significantly improve the Commonwealth’s urban centers’ major public parks and greenways. We look for projects that inspire, that innovate, and that attract more people to enjoy the outdoors. These are projects that would likely not happen without a private partner. We do not attempt to do the heavy lifting of government agencies, nor could we. We act as a catalyst to instigate and support government action.
The idea of an interconnected metropolitan park system accessible by foot, bike, carriage, and trolley was invented right here in Greater Boston. Depredations by a massive roadway system built to accommodate ever increasing automobile traffic eroded Greater Boston’s greenway network but did not destroy it. Starting in the 1970s, the environmental movement began to slowly change people’s attitudes, and the push for a renewed greenway network has continued to gather momentum in the first two decades of the 21st century.
Today, with automobile traffic at an all time high, a growing awareness of the impact of carbon emissions, and a revolution in transportation technology challenging old assumptions, political will to reclaim and reinvent our greenway network is growing. Boston can lead once again.