Welcome! This website features "Emerald Necklace Transects," student projects from the Cities, Landscape, and Modern Culture (LARC 2330) course in the School of Architecture at Northeastern University. The transects were developed in collaboration with the Digital Scholarship Group and Archives & Special Collections at the Northeastern Library.

These transects tell a different kind of story about Boston’s iconic Emerald Necklace by connecting it to seemingly unrelated or invisible elements. Taking the form of StoryMaps, the transects re-articulate the Emerald Necklace as a relational landscape connected to an array of social, political, and ecological histories and systems. The transects also recognize that the Emerald Necklace is a racialized landscape, and they are invitations to think more deeply about the entangled histories of landscape preservation and urban segregation in Boston and beyond.

The Emerald Necklace Transects are inspired in part by Jane Hutton’s book, Reciprocal Landscapes, and Brett Story’s film, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes and they draw on other resources such the guidebook, A People's Guide to Greater Boston, Karilyn Crockett’s book, People Before Highways, the Boston Globe’s 2017 Spotlight series on racism in Boston, Richard Rothstein’s book, The Color of Law, the Lower Roxbury Black History Project in the NU Archives & Special Collections, and essays by Garnette Cadogan, Laura Barraclough, Don Mitchell, Anne Whiston Spirn, and others.

You can explore the Emerald Necklace Transects below by clicking on a point on the map or on the list of student projects arranged by year.