About

Region 1 Planning Council (R1) is a special-purpose, regional government agency providing cross-jurisdictional, government-to-government collaborative planning across Northern Illinois.

The regional planning model provides an efficient means to promoting a well-informed, comprehensive dialogue that holistically addresses regional issues by fulfilling the needs of government entities for long-range planning, securing funding, and analyzing and providing data in support of regional projects and initiatives.

R1 provides a wide variety of services, guided by and aligned to core documents such as the Metropolitan Transportation Plan, the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (PDF), and the Climate Action Plan. R1 develops these plans with pertinent stakeholders in direct response to client and community needs. These needs cover the themes of community health, economic development, geographic information systems, grant services, regional transportation planning, research/analytics, and sustainability.

• Economic Development District (EDD)

• Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO)

See comprehensive reports of our agency’s activities throughout previous years.

2021 Annual Report: Video | Document (PDF)

2020 Annual Report: Video

Planning unifies multiple partner organizations with their respective communities toward a common goal. This often results in comprehensive planning documents, collaborative policies and procedures, and regional goals. 

Challenges that affect the region—social inequity, environmental degradation, structurally deficient infrastructure, or natural disasters—require the expertise from a variety of organizations and input from the public to develop unified actions that represent the interests of all. This creates policies that represent a broad group of individuals and their municipalities.  

For more information, please contact info@r1planning.org or 815-319-4180.

Consistent with 50 ILCS 15/Regional Planning Commission Act, Region 1 Planning Council was created by the cooperation of authorized authorities through intergovernmental agreement.