DTX Roche, West End Whole Foods, Back Bay Trader Joe's, etc. all seem in line with what I've been to in Europe. North End's got the Golden Goose and Go Banana's too. Smaller format definitely exists in Boston, and works.
City of Lynn's long term plan is to redevelop the whole waterfront to residential/commercial. Personally, I think the existing uses and insane amount of environmental remediation that'd be needed makes that unworkable, but that's the plan at least.
Can't imagine anything more environmentally crazy than taking a large area that's walkable to major urban center and making it off limits to development.
Re: Official City Hall Plaza Proposals
Foot traffic wasn't at all helped by the fact that they decided to have a gate for a non-ticketed event, only have one gate, and have that gate be poorly marked.
Technically, they aren't demolishing section 8 housing, but are actually adding section 8 housing. Existing units are old school style public housing. They'll be replaced by units that have project based vouchers attached to them. That's the general trend for legacy public housing developments...