Politics & Government
Residents Begin to Shape Dearborn's Future With First Master Plan Meeting
The first of several meetings explained the history of Dearborn's master plan, as well as gave residents a first stab at expressing what they hope to see in the city.
What will Dearborn’s future look like?
Many of the decisions concerning the city's direction in the coming decades will be centered on Dearborn’s master plan.
First developed in 1962, the master plan has gone through several major overhauls, as well as smaller tweaks every five years. Current community workshops and discussions, like the first held on Tuesday night at the , will result in another major redo of the master plan by the end of 2011.
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Amy Chesnut, the senior principal planner of McKenna Associates–the company facilitating the discussions–explained that, “the success of the plan is the people who prepared it.”
And while the master plan will guide Dearborn’s zoning in the future, Chesnut said, it’s much more than that.
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“The master plan will identify land uses and where they’re appropriate and where they’re not appropriate,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting. “It will also talk about things such as improvements to roads–where do we need more sidewalks, more bicycle lanes, more crosswalks? It will look at arts, culture and leisure.
“So it looks toward not just housing and homes and businesses, but it’s a more holistic approach to the types of development that will occur within the city.”
Tuesday evening’s meeting included several interactive exercises for residents who attended.
The first consisted of showing residents pictures of various types of housing, mixed-use facilities, businesses and communities, and asked them to rate the images as “appropriate” or “inappropriate” for Dearborn.
The second, more in-depth workshop, broke attendees off into four groups to discuss the most important features the city should work on maintaining or obtaining for the future. Each group presented their top ideas, which will be compiled by McKenna Associates as part of the master plan research process.
Chestnut said that they hope to be able to share the results of the community meetings, as well as the online survey currently available for residents to take, at the master plan summation meeting on Sept. 20.
Chestnut said the survey has already been taken by nearly 300 Dearborn residents.
Master plan community meetings broken down by neighborhood will take place over the next few weeks. Each will focus on future goals for those particular regions of the city, including the west end, downtown district, east end and south end. Anyone is welcome to attend and participate in those community discussions.
A full list of those meetings can be found .
