Nottingham is the capital of the East Midlands and hosts many bodies of regional importance, including the Government Office for the East Midlands, the East Midlands Development Agency and East Midlands Arts.

Nottingham is one of the eight Core Cities of England, a group representing key English regional cities. The Core Cities aim to work in partnership with Government and other stakeholders to promote the role of the Cities as the drivers of regional and national economic growth.

The Nottingham City Development Strategy sets out an ambitious and challenging vision for Greater Nottingham and the actions that need to be taken to achieve this.

Nottingham is also part of the Three Cities sub-region of the East Midlands which seeks to increase collaboration between Nottingham, Derby and Leicester to help accelerate economic growth and improve the cultural offer of the area.

The East Midlands Development Agency (emda) is one of the nine Regional Development Agencies in England, set up to bring a regional focus to economic development.  The Regional Economic Strategy (RES) aims to make the East Midlands one of Europe's Top 20 regions by 2010.  Urban Development policy and the Urban Action Plan are part of this. The Greater Nottingham Partnership is responsible for delivering the RES locally.

The East Midlands Regional Assembly is one of eight established in England (outside London). It is responsible for scrutinisng the development and delivery, by emda, of a successful economic strategy for the East Midlands. The Regional Spatial Strategy provides a long term development plan for the East Midlands over a 15 to 20 year period.