SAT-C06: Greening While Growing: Retooling POPS to Improve Open Space Access & Equity

Saturday, October 11, 2025

3:45 PM – 5:00 PM CT

1.25 PDH, LA CES/HSW

Speaker(s)

Brett Merriam

Project Manager, Public Sector
Gehl
Diana Fernandez-Bibeau, ASLA, PLA (she/her/hers)

Deputy Chief of Urban Design
City of Boston
Boston, Massachusetts
Anne N. Lin, Affil. ASLA (she/her/hers)

Director of Planning & Narrative Strategy
Grayscale Collaborative
San Francisco, California

With increasingly constrained federal and local resources, cities need to better understand how private development can deliver quality public spaces. The City of Boston is leading a landmark effort to reimagine privately owned public spaces (POPS) as a policy and design tool to increase equity and access in the city’s open space network.

Learning Outcomes:

Explore a framework to allocate responsibilities between the private and public sector, when it comes to the development, management, and programming of publicly accessible open spaces.
Learn design and operations strategies to improve the community’s sense of belonging and inclusion in public space, especially when those spaces are publicly accessible but privately owned.
Understand the opportunities and limitations of leveraging private development to address citywide open space gaps in access and equity, or to enhance service level.
Understand how multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral collaborations are crucial to improving open space network access and equity.