GLUE's mission is:

• To bolster regional identity amongst older industrial urban centers in the American Great Lakes region by connecting the people who love them to each other;
• To advocate for policies that promote sustainable and equitable growth for Great Lakes cities;
• To serve as a gateway of engagement for city-lovers who seek to participate in revitalization conversations and efforts;
• To facilitate inter-city and cross-sector conversations among the change agents around the region to empower their work and the propagation of their good ideas; and
• To turn curious, casual city devotees into empowered, engaged change agents.

The following four "first principles" guide GLUE's philosophy of change:

Urbanism: Cities are our world's economic drivers. Decision makers cannot afford to underestimate their value nor overlook their needs.

Regionalism: Great Lakes urban centers need to overcome outlooks of despair and isolation by forging a shared perspective and developing strength in numbers.

Storytelling: White papers alone cannot propel an agenda, particularly for the emerging generation of leadership. No need is expressed more powerfully than via human narrative.

Building Networks: Connecting people and institutions who share challenges and objectives will foster regional collaboration and transfer examples of success throughout the region.

GLUE's network collaboratively articulated the following values at its opening conference in January 2008, which are invoked to frame conversations about policies, activities, and forces at work in our cities.

GLUE supports and aspires to:

• Information sharing
• Transparency
• Inter-sector/inter-city cooperation
• The "mainstreaming" of good ideas, big and small
• The active solicitation of multiple perspectives
• Long-term, sustainable thinking and action
• Tolerance and inclusion across policy fields