ON TO 2050 continues CMAP’s focus on industry clusters as a framework for understanding the regional economy and organizing policies and investments to bolster broad economic growth. An industry cluster is a group of firms and related stakeholders that gain productive advantages from operating in close proximity -- such as deeper labor pools, better access to customers and suppliers, knowledge spillovers, and other economies of scale. Regional efforts can address clusters’ shared, sector-specific challenges such as the steepening competition from globalization and the accelerating pace of technological and market changes.

The makeup of our regional economy -- in particular, the industries and occupations -- has significant implications for future economic growth and opportunity. Sustaining broad prosperity depends on improving the competitiveness, productivity, and inclusiveness of regional assets in light of both anticipated and unforeseen economic shifts. As highlighted in an ON TO 2050 snapshot report (PDF), metropolitan Chicago has diverse areas of industrial strength, many of which have faced significant headwinds since 2001. A more detailed understanding of our specialized clusters can help to inform decisions on transportation, land use, economic and workforce development, and local technical assistance. Building on momentum from the private sector, CMAP’s research aims to serve as a basis for convening industry leadership and developing opportunities for high-impact, cross-cutting collaboration.

In 2020, CMAP released an analysis of the region’s traded industry clusters – groups of interlinked businesses that sell goods and services in markets outside the region. These export-oriented industries have excellent potential to drive inclusive economic growth because they bring in new business activity as well as  provide better jobs for workers. However, recent declines among our traded clusters are constraining growth in the rest of the economy. This research identifies challenges and opportunities among the region’s core industrial assets, as well as strategies that draw on a cluster-based approach to support regional growth.

Beginning in 2012, CMAP has developed a series of “drill-down” studies to understand the characteristics and performance of major industry clusters in metropolitan Chicago. These reports have assessed the strength of the region’s freight and manufacturing clusters, focusing on strategies to support their innovation, workforce, and infrastructure. A subsequent report (PDF) has examined the powerful “freight-manufacturing nexus,” which offers the region distinct competitive advantages in transforming manufacturing inputs into final products.

Building on previous drill-down studies, CMAP released a 2014 sub-regional analysis of communities near O’Hare International Airport, which has one of the region’s strongest concentrations of freight and manufacturing activity. The report outlines how local conditions and multijurisdictional initiatives support the competitiveness of key industry clusters. Continued industrial success often depends on local collaboration in workforce development, stormwater management, redevelopment planning, and improved truck freight routing and infrastructure.

As one of the nation’s centers for global commerce, metropolitan Chicago is a hub for the movement of goods on a local, national, and international scale. In 2015, CMAP published a supply chain trends report assessing the flow of goods into and out of the region and exploring factors that drive logistics decisions in the region’s manufacturing clusters. A subsequent 2017 report examined the key characteristics and relationships among industries in the metals supply chain (PDF) and offered several recommendations for building on the cluster’s historic strengths in the region.