Chicago, 7 area counties agree to work to boost exports

After decades of an “every-town-for-itself” approach to economic development, Chicago-area leaders will pool efforts to pump up the region’s tepid export growth rate in a pilot project to be announced Monday.

The planned two-year collaboration among Chicago, Cook County and the six collar counties, while quite modest in scale, represents a sea change for the region, where local governments have a history of poaching each other’s corporate citizens and competing for newcomers…Please click here to read Kathy Bergen’s story in the Tribune.