Mayor Daley’s surprise announcement that he will not run for reelection has let loose a flood of would-be mayoral candidates. Even more candidates have come out of the woodwork to run for alderman now that the city council may no longer be a rubber stamp.

What has not occurred is thoughtful consideration of our city’s future in a post-Daley era. Since a Daley has been mayor for 42 of the last 55 years, some Chicagoans have thought, perhaps the title of the office was Daley rather than Mayor. But now we need a plan for a new post-recession and post-Daley Chicago.

Mayoral candidates will address our immediate problems like a $650 million budget deficit, failing schools, crime on the South and West Sides of Chicago, and a bankrupt CTA. Mayor Daley will close the budget gap before he leaves office, but come May, when the new mayor arrives on the 5th floor of city hall, it will reappear. The schools and el trains will keep barely chugging along in the months ahead. But we need permanent solutions to all these problems, not band-aids.

Chicago is the Midwest Capital of the Global Economy, but the dark side of that accomplishment is an unemployment rate of 30%-40% in expanding poverty neighborhoods within the inner city. There are just too many housing foreclosures and too little affordable housing. There are too few jobs.

Chicago can’t solve these problems alone. We are a metropolitan region, not just a city. But we have none of the institutions necessary to govern this multi-county expanse of eight million people with an economy bigger than most countries. Our political system does put the mayor at the center, however. It is from this center that we can begin to heal a dysfunctional state government and unite the region in a steady push forward.

For the next seven months mayoral and aldermanic candidates will concentrate on just getting themselves elected. The mayoral campaign will cost candidates more than $4 million and most successful aldermanic candidates $200,000 or more. They will create competing political armies of campaign volunteers and patronage workers. But beyond the campaign sound bites, Chicagoans will be looking for new leaders with a positive vision.

When Harold Washington ran for mayor, he ran on a three point platform of reform: good government, empowerment, and citizen participation. That would be a worthy platform now for would-be mayors and aldermen now. Good government reform today would mean the elimination of patronage and corruption at city hall along with the transparency to let citizens and civic groups monitor what is being decided in our names. Empowerment would let every racial and ethnic group hold positions of power and be included in the decision-making. Citizen participation would require “little city halls” in the neighborhoods and letting some important decisions be made in town hall meetings in the community.

And what of Chicago’s place in the world? We are a global city, deeply connected to the international economy. But what role are we to play and how are the profits to be shared? We can’t continue 10% rich, 40% barely making it, and 50% poor. We have to rebuild the shrinking middleclass.

To achieve this we have to have the best educational system from Head Start and Kindergarten to Graduate School. We have to create value-added products like business services, new products involving “intellectual capital,” new inventions, new internet software and electronic devices. And we have to make products that can’t be made in sweatshops in the third world. Achieving this is the new economic development we need.

So if you want to be mayor or alderman, tell us what you will do to reshape, remake, reenergize, and reinvent a new Chicago in the post-Daley era. Mobilize Chicagoans to march to your drumbeat and follow your vision. Empower us across all racial, ethnic, and gender lines. Make us one Chicago with hope for a brighter future.