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David Fisher was recruited in 2001 from Minneapolis to lead the new Metropolitan Park and Recreation District. He was charged with building a connecting web of trails and greenways. Last week, the district renamed itself Great Rivers Greenway, a moniker it hopes will become a mind-set, redefining this Midwestern industrial region as "clean, green and connected." . . .

When you dream of what this can do for St. Louis, what do you see?

I think it will turn it around economically. ... Watch out Chicago. Watch out (San Francisco) Bay Area. Why do you want to live in the sprawl of the Bay Area or the traffic madness of Chicago or New York? Here's a place we can build and have people live in these corridors, in these wonderful green cells. It can be one the great cities of the United States again. I can feel it. I can almost feel it.