The Milwaukee 7 is a cooperative effort to help southeastern Wisconsin think and act in ways that promote the long-term economic and social health of the entire region.  The region is comprised of 7 counties: Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Walworth, Washington and Waukesha.

As a region, southeastern Wisconsin has powerful advantages. Among them are growing business clusters, world-class arts and culture and environmental health.

But, as a region, we also have:

• A stagnant tax base overall, despite pockets of spectacular growth.
• Income per person significantly below the national average.
• The third most racially segregated area in America.
• A labor shortage in the suburbs and high unemployment in the city.
• An annual loss of $200 million of personal income to other regions.

Southeastern Wisconsin faces a choice of whether to be a region in decline or a player in the global economy. In order to choose the latter, it needs a shared vision of priorities for regional action, an underpinning of research and analysis to help guide that action, and a method of advocating, coordinating and implementing action for the region as a whole. The GMC has committed to aiding this effort along with a diverse coalition of partners.

CSRF's goal is to establish two things for southeastern Wisconsin: a regionally respected and accepted advocate, and credible information. The advocate -- or advocacy network -- must be armed with the information required to promote regional actions, and the actions cannot be implemented successfully unless they have broad support of citizens across the region. These tasks can be accomplished by the creation of a broad-based network of regional leaders who convene on a regular basis in order to direct research undertakings that can lead to actions that promote regional growth.

The ultimate objective of this project is to set in motion a process that will lead to a southeastern Wisconsin that can compete effectively in the global marketplace and participate fully in the larger region that includes the Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison triangle. The project will accomplish this through a sustained campaign to strengthen the economic and social health of the region by creating and maintaining a regional leadership network and providing the research underpinning necessary for that network to take effective action.

The Milwaukee 7 unveiled its Regional Economic Positioning Framework during its May 30th, 2007 meeting at Gateway Technical Institute in Kenosha. The presentation slides may be viewed below!

May 30th 2007 presentation in Flash format