Since the core area will serve as your network's central nervous system, the configuration you specified is the best setup and the one that most businesses and multinational corporations are utilizing, when responding to your inquiry you will create all the routing on the core level and a VTP domain , with the core serving as the server and the Edge serving as clients transporting the VLAN's via trunk. As the brother mentioned above, HSRP or VRRP will also provide point of redundancy. There is much more you can do with the Core on a configuration level, but you will make sure only distribution switches should be connected to Core never connect access switches direct on the core. having routing on centralizing position is easy to track down any issue in future and backup-restore will be on the one point. A sever-farm switch is also recommended for the corporate network.
