The plan, which Lightfoot detailed in a speech to the Economic Club just before the holidays, essentially puts an “equity” overlay on the global city/corporate headquarters/tech center strategy pursued by predecessors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel. No one can argue with the intent to spread the new wealth of Chicago’s booming central area farther into outlying, predominantly minority neighborhoods—or with the goal to rebuild Chicago’s population at least to the 3 million mark. The social (and political) benefits are clear.

But with a bold strategy come risks. In this case, the risk that City Hall may lack the political and governmental bandwidth to both keep nurturing downtown growth and shift emphasis to the neighborhoods. And even if it does, the question is how successful such efforts will be in a city that, like it or not, still is the capital of what used to be called the Rust Belt, a reality that limits Chicago’s ability to rise.

Like Emanuel, Lightfoot’s team started by pulling together comparative data on where Chicago stands, in this case mostly from Moody’s Analytics. The data is not good.

Compared to 10 other “peer metropolitan areas”—Dallas, San Francisco, Houston, Denver Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis, Washington and Philadelphia—the Chicago region has been doing poorly for a while and is likely to continue to do so unless something changes.

For instance, since the 2009 recession, compound annual growth in regional product here has risen just 1.1 percent a year, tied with Philadelphia for last place and barely half the national 1.8 percent level. Total employment has followed the same track, with Chicago and Philly again tied at 0.5 percent growth a year versus figures such as 1.9 percent in Dallas, 1.8 percent in Denver and 0.8 percent in the nation as a whole.

Moody’s expects more of the same, including more population loss. Over the new decade, Chicago is the only one of those metros expected to lose population, projected to be down about 2 percent by 2031, with even New York and Los Angeles showing at least some gain.

To reverse those trends, Lightfoot’s economic plan, like Emanuel’s, focuses on 11 industrial clusters in which the city has strength or the ability to tap into growth. The list of sectors to be targeted for development will sound familiar. Included are transportation and logistics, tourism and hospitality, health services, professional services, tech and manufacturing.

But Lightfoot’s team did something else. It broke each sector out by how inclusive each is in terms of share of jobs held by Hispanics and African Americans. Consider that a clue as to what is to come next in the still-developing plan.

One overarching goal will be to rebuild population. Mayekar says his team is convinced that the sheer loss of population in recent decades, most of it among blacks, has held back the regional economy in a major way as buying power literally walked out the door to other regions. Ergo, one focus of the plan will be to try to restore “quality of life” comforts in 10 corridors on the South and West sides—groceries and restaurants, dry cleaners and bars—in hopes that such amenities will spur broader growth.

It’s mostly middle-class blacks who have been leaving, and downtown needs them, Mayekar says. “The lack of neighborhood development will be bad for downtown,” he puts it. “You can’t build downtown without more people.”

Yet the analysis Mayekar's team put together indicates that food processing and manufacturing, transport and logistics, and hospitality and accommodations are the clusters with the highest share of minority job holders. They also offer midlevel pay or worse. The two fastest-growing sectors, clean technology and tech, actually have the lowest share of jobs held by minorities, with just 6 percent of tech jobs held by African Americans and 6 percent by Hispanics. And they are among the top-paying.

Lightfoot’s challenge will be to improve that mix while simultaneously pushing for overall growth—growth that involves more than getting companies like McDonald’s to move their headquarters from the suburbs to downtown. One key is revitalizing Emanuel’s plan to sharpen the City Colleges system's focus on career-oriented education. Another aspect worth watching is renewed talk of apprenticeships and other programs aimed at providing more opportunity more quickly to those who need it.

But also worth watching are recent trends in which big real estate development capital increasingly is bypassing Chicago, to the peril of downtown growth. So is the failure of the state to seriously deal with its pension problems—that’s not Lightfoot’s fault—and continued slow growth in Midwest neighbors whose industries are clients of Chicago’s professional-services sector.

One other fact worth noting. Of the “peer” metros Moody’s compared Chicago to, almost all of them have lost black population and gained whites this decade. That means the “inclusive” growth Chicago now seeks would be unique. Achieving it will be a real challenge.

Mayekar says the city is up for the challenge. Its very population diversity, with the city split roughly into white, black and Latino thirds, is a selling point, he argues.

“What you’re seeing in this plan is very much in the spirit of Mayor Lightfoot’s agenda,” he says. “It’s based in the neighborhoods.”