Economic Development

Driving economic growth and advancing equity across the region

Regional coordination supports robust economic growth by prioritizing, aligning, and managing initiatives to increase northeastern Illinois’ competitiveness and expand opportunities. Our region can strengthen jobs and capital investment by working together, to achieve more than any one community can on its own.

Through their role in planning for and regulating development, local governments support small but significant pieces of regional markets for retail, office, industrial, and other development types — which house the industries that form the region’s economy. All these local decisions create the communities and economic centers that impact infrastructure needs, commute patterns, goods movement, and overall regional economic success. At the same time, the economic assets that make up communities’ core competitive advantages often extend across jurisdictional boundaries.

Greater Chicagoland Economic Partnership

The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) and partners at the Brookings Institution set the work in motion for the Greater Chicagoland Economic Partnership, a collaboration among the seven counties of northeastern Illinois (Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, Will) and the City of Chicago, to drive economic growth and advance equity across our region and its diverse communities. The partnership is managed by World Business Chicago.

The partnership builds on recommendations from the City of Chicago Recovery Task Force report for a regional, collaborative approach to economic development in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a forum for local government leadership, the partnership engages corporate, civic, and institutional partners to leverage our combined strengths and implement approved joint plans for the benefit of the region.

Greater Chicagoland Economic Partnership

Improve local development incentives

Local governments use many types of incentives to encourage development, but there can be drawbacks like high costs, diminishing returns, heightened competition, and inequitable outcomes.

To enhance northeastern Illinois’ economic and fiscal position, ON TO 2050 — the region’s long-range plan — calls for governments to reform local development incentives within a larger program of smart, regional economic development.

Improving local development incentives

Understand job quality and access in your community

Communities can use CMAP’s job quality and access tool to understand the advantages of their local labor market, identify where support is needed, and develop action plans to strengthen industries that support shared prosperity. The interactive data visualization tool provides analysis on employment trends, industry clusters, job quality, and job accessibility (such as the level of education required) — and users can narrow results by county and zip code.

Reorient state and regional economic development

CMAP developed a series of studies to explore how other states and metropolitan regions develop innovative strategies to reorient economic development practices:

Plan for regional transit and economic development

Transit drives our region’s economy. It connects people to jobs, education, social services, healthcare, and other essential services. Our region’s transit system is facing a fiscal cliff — a $730 million annual budget gap. The three agencies that operate bus and rail services across the region will run out of funds in less than two years, when federal funding assistance ends.

The Plan of action for regional transit includes recommendations for the financial stability of the transit system, system improvements, and mechanisms to make it happen, while considering racial equity, climate change, and economic development.

Prioritize areas for investment

The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act creates an opportunity to invest in roads, bridges, and rail, to strengthen northeastern Illinois’ transportation system. To maximize this opportunity, CMAP works with partners and stakeholders annually to identify northeastern Illinois priority investments for the region and achieve consensus around sustainable solutions to our transportation challenges.