"Choice amenities" like Washington Park are changing urban landscape across U.S.

Michael Gaughan, a director with the National Development Council, writes a column on the Governing Magazine web site today discussing how new ideas and players are coalescing to provide attractive options for the livability of cities, saying that's good news for economic development. He includes Washington Park on a short list of examples of urban projects centering on new forms of recreation and mobility that often have a blurry distinction.

"More recently, a new movement has taken hold that is creating an equally powerful set of amenities for today's city-dwellers," Gaughan writes. "A hallmark of this transformation has been an interdisciplinary approach in which transportation departments and public/private developers are as important to recreation as parks departments have long been. For economic-development professionals, this evolution requires further expansion in the definition of what constitutes an urban amenity as well as who should be recruited for growth partnerships."

Read the full Governing Magazine column here.