The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, in partnership with a network of academic, public policy, business and civic organizations, began a multi-year research and policy development initiative in 2005 to improve the economic vitality of the Great Lakes region*. This important region made America a global agricultural and industrial powerhouse. Today the area is working to reinvent itself during a new era of dramatic economic and social transformation driven by globalization and technological change.

Brookings and its partners completed the first phase of the Great Lakes Economic Initiative-developing and disseminating a framing report, The Vital Center: A Federal-State Compact to Renew the Great Lakes Region. Released in October 2006, the report garnered extensive media coverage and was shared through a series of well-attended briefings of civic, business, political, labor, and media leaders in nearly a dozen major cities throughout the region.

The report describes why the Great Lakes region developed as it did and how it is positioned today to be a global economic player. It provides a candid assessment of what assets the region can build on and the challenges it must overcome. And it identifies ways that Great Lakes states can strengthen their economies through collective action. Further, it describes how and why the region is a vital contributor to the long-term economic health of the nation and how it can join with federal partners to pursue an integrated state, multi-state, and national policy agenda.

The Initiative is catalyzing a discussion among leaders and stakeholders seeking to advance an economic vision for the Great Lakes and the contributions that the region can and must make to U.S. competitiveness. This discussion is occurring among governors; business, civic and political stakeholders; the region's Congressional delegation; and aspirants for President in 2008.

During 2008-2009 the project will focus on:

• what the Great Lakes states can do themselves to transition from an industrial economy to continued leadership in the global information age; and
• how federal policy can help ensure that the region grows as a vital economic engine for the nation in the years ahead.

With the strong interest and support of the Canadian government, Brookings is incorporating Canadian data into the Great Lakes analysis, leading to a Vital Center supplement that will reflect the economic integration of the region (including Ontario and Quebec), and that will describe a shared U.S.-Canadian economic strategy for the Great Lakes region.

The Great Lakes Economic Initiative is also informing Brookings' Blueprint for National Prosperity project (which advances public policies central to U.S. competitiveness and provides independent and powerful ideas to shape the 2008 election-season debate and the work of the next Administration).

Brookings initiated the project under the leadership of John Austin, a Brookings nonresident senior fellow and vice president of the Michigan State Board of Education, in response to growing interest among Great Lakes leaders to think strategically about the future economy of the region. The initiative was conceived in acknowledgement that the upper Midwest, popularized as the "Rustbelt," has been and remains a significant center of economic activity, trade, and knowledge generation, but is making a spotty and imperfect transition from the industrial era which it dominated to success in the new knowledge economy.