Lynette Boswell Washington, PhD
BUPD, 2002; and MURP, 2003
Director of School and Facility Planning, Baltimore City Public Schools
Lynette Boswell Washington, PhD, is the executive director of school and facilities planning for Baltimore City Public Schools. In this role, she oversees the planning of new and renovated school facilities as a part of the $1 billion 21st Century School Building Plan. The plan, which started in the fall of 2010, is being used as the catalyst to fund the modernization of Baltimore’s public schools for students in neighborhoods across the city and to spur the revitalization of surrounding communities. Dr. Washington also leads a team of facility planners in school level spatial analysis, utilization studies and rezoning work for students impacted by the plan.
Before joining city schools, Washington was the division chief of research and strategic planning for Baltimore City Planning Department, where she was responsible for research, policy, market analysis, and strategic planning efforts to support city agencies. While in this role, she led the development of the citywide Sustainable Communities Plan, used to support and prioritize redevelopment initiatives in the city.
Dr. Washington’s background prior to working in Baltimore City has crossed numerous planning related disciplines, from a focus on vacant properties and challenges in postindustrial Flint Michigan, as a resident research fellow for the Genesee Institute; to economic development as a program manager in the Performance and National Program Division in the Economic Development Administrative (EDA) at the Department of Commerce. As a program manager, Dr. Washington worked with the Assistant Deputy Secretary of the EDA on the Strong Cities, Strong Community (SC2) Visioning Grant under the Obama Administration SC2 initiative. The initiative was established in 2011 under the White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities, to bring together 19 federal agencies with the mission to implement economic development assistance in economically distressed cities.
Dr. Washington holds an undergraduate and master degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Ball State University, with a Master of Urban Design from the University of Michigan. Dr. Washington received her Doctorate Degree of Urban and Regional Planning and Design from the University of Maryland. As a doctorate student at the University, Dr. Washington was a CRGE (Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity) Interdisciplinary Scholar and a 2010 winner of the Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant for her dissertation entitled: “Do Neighborhood Housing Markets Typologies Matter? Measuring the impacts of the HOME Partnership Program Investment in Baltimore, Maryland.” She has served as guest critic for University of Michigan and Morgan State University design juries, and served as an instructor at University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University urban studies programs. Dr. Washington currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland in the vibrant Charles Village neighborhood with her husband and two children.