The City of Riverside leads the Inland Empire in every measure of economic power: population, income, employment, bank deposits, assessed valuation, retail sales, office space and college enrollments.

The City of Riverside is partners with a variety of public/private regional economic efforts to attract and retain businesses in the inland area east of Los Angeles. These include the Inland Empire Economic Partnership, the Global Trade Center of the Inland Empire (which works to develop international trade links between local/regional companies and overseas markets), and the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce.

Riverside is also leading several key regional efforts to improve the environment including the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which works with cities and companies across the entire five-county Greater Los Angeles basin to promote and enforce air quality regulations.

Other regional alliances include the three-county Inland Library system with reciprocal borrowing. The library also participates in the Library of California Region V, Tierra del Sol, a five-county area in which multi-type libraries cooperate to share resources.