Since the election of governors and mayors by vote, many local governments in Korea establish long-range plans for their regional development. The major purposes of the plans are to set up development path for their communities and to devise economic development strategies. But most of the plans established thus formulated by the same method utilized in centralized political regime. This method is considered no longer appropriate to devise the long-range development plans for local government especially in the era of globalization and localization, where local governments behave independently, where local governments behave independently competition. We suggest an alternative way to establish such plans, based on the method employed in business sector. The plans, formulated in this way, are called strategy oriented long-range development plans. The underlying logic for the plans is non-linear one. The plans are issue oriented and focus more on process than outcome. Given that these features are properly incorporated in the plans, we expect that the strategy oriented long-range development plans can be genuine guidelines for local economic development in the years to come.