Project Update: Identity & Experience Audit In Progress

The initial Research & Public Engagement phase of the ThisIsDearborn project is now complete.

Over the past several months, we’ve been listening, learning, and gathering perspectives from across Dearborn to better understand what makes the community unique, what matters most to residents, and what opportunities exist for the city’s future.

This summer, we hosted five virtual listening sessions focused on different aspects of life in Dearborn. These conversations brought together residents and community members to share their experiences, perspectives, and ideas for the future. We’re grateful to everyone who took the time to participate and share their thoughts with us.

We also conducted stakeholder interviews with community, business, and civic leaders to gain additional perspectives on Dearborn and its future. We’ll continue to have opportunities to connect with more stakeholders as the project progresses.

The community survey is now closed, with over 500 responses submitted across English, Arabic, and Spanish-speaking audiences. Our partnership with ACCESS was especially valuable in helping us reach additional residents, particularly in the East and South End. Their outreach contributed more survey responses and also created opportunities for people to share their thoughts in person at Dearborn Homecoming.

Thank you to everyone who completed the survey, participated in a listening session, spoke with our team, or shared their perspective in another way. Your input is helping shape the direction of this project.

Now, we’re moving into the next stage of the work: making sense of everything we’ve heard. We’re developing an Identity & Experience Audit that will bring together insights from the community survey, interviews, listening sessions, workshops, research, and our time spent in Dearborn. This internal working document will help the project team and city staff identify the key focus areas that the Dearborn brand should help address and advance.

These focus areas will be about more than marketing. They will serve as strategic filters that can help inform how the City of Dearborn tells its story, aligns efforts across the community, makes decisions, and thinks about its future.

We’re also beginning to plan our next visit to Dearborn, which we anticipate taking place in October. During that visit, we’ll bring early strategic concepts back to city staff and community stakeholders to make sure the direction we’re developing reflects what we’ve heard throughout this process.

We’ve spent the first several months listening. Now, we’re beginning to turn what we’ve heard into a defined vision for the City of Dearborn.