Vision Lynn Comprehensive Plan

The City Council and Planning Board unanimously voted to adopt Vision Lynn, making it the city’s first-ever official comprehensive plan! Vision Lynn crafts a sustainable roadmap for future land use, urban form, and infrastructure throughout the city. Rather than an exhaustive list of policy recommendations, the Plan focuses on defining good growth and development for the Lynn community and establishes a clear physical development framework guiding growth over the next 20 years.

The framework addresses sustainable growth at various scales from larger citywide networks to the neighborhood and street. The project’s success relied on unpacking good urban design principles with the Lynn community, through clear and compelling illustrations, accessible language, and empathy and understanding of how these principles impact people’s everyday lives. Utile worked collaboratively with the City of Lynn to lead a robust community engagement process utilizing many different engagement methods and languages including social media campaigns, online and written surveys, workshops, and mapping activities. The outcome is a meaningful, long-term plan that responds to what the community wants for its future.

As part of this process, Utile generated development scenarios and future land use outcomes that explored future growth and development in two very different contexts—Market Square and the Gearworks site on the Lynnway—to help inform implementable development recommendations for different nodes and corridors in Lynn. These future development scenarios explore land use mixes and density, building form and scale, public realm design, access and connectivity, open space and stormwater management strategies, economic opportunities, and larger urban connections to and within the city. The scenarios maximize several potential co-benefits for the Lynn community including opportunities for new housing, better jobs, and public services.