WASHINGTON — The Democratic presidential candidate Michael R. Bloomberg released a job creation plan on Wednesday that frames America’s economic divide primarily in regional terms — and not along the rich-versus-everyone-else class lines favored by his more populist rivals.

Aides said Mr. Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York, saw an effort to close the gap between so-called superstar regions like Silicon Valley and slower-growing areas like Akron, Ohio, as the best way to ensure that the economy delivered prosperity to Americans up and down the income distribution chain.

The focus also allows Mr. Bloomberg, who is a billionaire, to take a view of inequality that largely skirts the criticism that the very rich wield outsize power and influence in an era of extreme income and wealth concentration in America.

Other Democratic candidates, led by Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have centered their campaigns on stripping economic wealth and power from rich individuals and corporations and redistributing it more evenly. They have accused Mr. Bloomberg of trying to buy his way into contention by spending millions of dollars from his personal fortune — the type of wealth they are targeting — on advertising.