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The Boston Schoolyard Initiative: A Public-Private Partnership for Rebuilding Urban Play Spaces

The Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI) is a policy effort to rebuild school yards in Boston through innovative citywide public-private partnerships. At the center of the initiative is a commitment to engage multiple stakeholders and utilize a bottom-up planning process to encourage meaningful change. Based on a case study of BSI, this article develops a framework to understand and analyze how different school and neighborhood sectors can partner to benefit neighborhood communities and utilize the built environment to encourage more active living and active learning. The article contributes to a literature that focuses on the effects of school yards and the role of physically active environments on learning. It expands on this literature by looking at the school-yard initiative as a way to build and expand relationships between teachers, parents, and the community at large. Finally, the study shows that even older schools in inner-city neighborhoods, previously considered blights, can be turned into community, educational, and political assets.