In August 1999, Governor George H. Ryan signed into law the “State and Regional Development Strategy Act” (PA 91-476), re-instituting a multi-year strategic planning process for economic development in Illinois. Governor Ryan’s administration has placed an emphasis on strategic planning as a means of transforming Illinois government. “Simply defined, strategic planning is a disciplined effort to produce fundamental decisions and actions that shape and guide what an organization like state government is doing, why it is doing it and whether or not it could be doing it better.

The state and regional development strategy is unique. Governor Ryan and the Illinois General
Assembly have addressed the strategic planning issues of economic development by asking
DCCA to “establish a consensus on a long-term economic development strategy that recognizes both the competitive position on the state’s regions and needs of commerce and industry.”1 Statutory direction calls for integrating the state plan with local and regional plans thus providing a comprehensive strategic plan for economic development in Illinois. The primary stakeholders within each major economic region will have an opportunity to, with state assistance, undertake research and assessment efforts that define what each regional economy is, where its constituents want to go, and how to they plan to get there.

The Illinois Economic Development Board approved the planning process in January 2000 and
published the “Plan to Plan,” in February 2000.2 To assist in carrying out the requirements of
the statute, the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs engaged a number of university partners, i.e. university-based economic development research and policy expertise around the state to assist with the implementation of the process. The planning for the Northeastern Metro component area – which includes Cook, Lake, DuPage, Will, and Kankakee counties – is being managed by the Center for Urban Economic Development (CUED) at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The university partners began implementing the Plan in early Spring 2000.The first several
steps included: reviewing existing regional economic development plans, analyzing the
component area’s place in the New Economy, conducting a field questionnaire, holding focus
group sessions and developing component area vision statements and identifying economic
development priorities. DCCA published a second Five-Year State and Regional Strategy report on February 1, 2001 that summarized the activities of the component areas and the main economic development themes around the state.

This year’s goal is to take the visions and priorities established in 2000 and identify the programmatic, administrative, and legislative actions that need to be taken to move forward.
This activity has been replicated in all eleven component areas with the input of local economic
development experts, mayors, business owners, and other community leaders. The process
followed in the Northeastern Metro component area is described in detail in Section IIC. For
additional information regarding this process, please see the UIC/CUED web site at
http://data.cued.uic.edu/cued.