A Proposed Itinerary For Candidate Emanuel

“Waiting for Superman” is a hot documentary about our schools, not Rahm Emanuel’s run for mayor of Chicago. It’s why his “listening tour” is a good idea if it is partly fueled by humility about his steep learning curve.

A very smart political mechanic and tactician, Mr. Emanuel has been characteristically focused during his campaign preamble. He has dined with potential donors, like Sam Zell, the real estate broker. He has talked to sharp folks about issues. He has taken the temperature of potential rivals.

That’s all predictable. But the challenges he would face as mayor are ample and necessitate thinking beyond what has been his frequent professional reflex: getting 50 percent plus one vote in political and legislative campaigns.

He can’t leave chagrined losers, even whole communities, in his wake if he wins next year. So he should think carefully about where he might go starting on Monday, and to whom he might listen, if he tours the town in a minibus we could tag the No-Profanity Express.

Few know the city better than Alan Solomon, a former ace travel writer for The Chicago Tribune. As part of a City of Chicago project, Mr. Solomon has inspected each of 77 neighborhoods in an unprecedented cultural-historical inventory. Mr. Emanuel can find his essays on ExploreChicago.org. Better still, he can jump on lulu.com and download the entire collection plus extras like a free e-book, “Explore Chicago: Eat Play, Love Our Neighborhoods,” or shell out $58 for the 260-page print version.

Mr. Solomon suggests going to Auburn Gresham on the South Side, Portage Park on the Northwest Side, South Chicago, South Deering and Hegewisch on the Southeast Side, and Bronzeville, encompassing Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard from 26th to 51st Streets.

Auburn Gresham was once a vibrant Irish area and is now black “with a solid middle-class heart and an activist soul,”Mr. Solomon said. There have been a few small gains with new business and housing, and there is potential for revival.

Portage Park is lovely, but the fragile element is Six Corners, where Milwaukee, Cicero and Irving Park Road meet. “Lots of empty stores and uncertain promises,” Mr. Solomon said. Will a planned pedestrian mall work as retailers pull back? The city needs this to work.

Mr. Solomon’s Southeast slice, including South Chicago, is an area that North Siders, like Mr. Emanuel, tend not to know. Steel industry jobs are gone and too much land is vacant, “like the eyes of many neighborhood residents,” Mr. Solomon said. Reviving this area, before the churches get boarded up and the housing stock collapses, is important.

Bronzeville would have been a big winner if the city had won the 2016 Summer Olympics. Yes, there’s upscale housing and isolated development, but it “remains the city’s most publicized nonstarter,” Mr. Solomon said.

When it comes to black areas like Bronzeville, State Representative William D. Burns of the 26th District on the South Side has some pointed advice for Mr. Emanuel: “If serious, he needs to start talking to African-American politicians,” something he has not done much of so far, according to Mr. Burns, a onetime legislative aide to State Senator Barack Obama.

In addition, Mr. Burns said, Mr. Emanuel should check out Valois restaurant in Hyde Park and Izola’s on East 79th Street. Listen there, as well as to clergy, community organizers, social service providers, contractors and Urban League members in the city’s complex black community.

As for the impact of the Emanuel-Obama relationship, Mr. Burns said, “People appreciate his service, but he’s got to address the community’s real problems.”

Mr. Emanuel will also have to navigate the battle between labor and business for control of a post-Daley Chicago, with his underappreciated non-ideological whatever-works bent a potential asset.

He has heavy lifting to do in the Latino community, which may produce multiple candidates and isn’t happy with the White House on immigration.

Among other groups, he should visit the nonprofit Resurrection Project, which does low-income housing in Pilsen and Little Village, and Mujeres Latinas en Acción, which deals with domestic violence, said Julian Posada, founder of Café Media and the new boss of the Chicago Fire, Chicago’s Major League Soccer team.

As for issues citywide, the toughest may be our depressingly uneven public schools. Mr. Emanuel could walk just a block from his house — currently rented out — to Ravenswood Elementary. I can’t find a teacher, principal or parent who recalls his showing up at the high-poverty, under-resourced school while he was the congressman for that district.

Especially if he puts his own children in private school, now would be a good time to listen to the hard-working people there.