In the past, the city street of America provided a multitude of functions for its inhabitants. It was the city's living room, public plaza, courtyard and open space. Today, these assets have been marginalized to make space for the ever-consuming culture of the car. Losing these spaces has stifled communities and isolated individuals. Intersections that once provided open forums for gathering have now become dangerous grounds designed not for the person nor the community, but for the masses of private vehicles that pierce the city.

4th St. and 9th Ave. can be the new American City Street. Here the functions of the street as a public domain are resurrected to provide prosperity and health to the community. Civic Space, Markets, Gardens, Leisure, Water, and Green areas are the essential fabrics of a community. These types of spaces are the basis for the redesign of 4th and 9th street. These fabrics are woven together to create a multi-functioning and multi-acting street space that can redefine the public street for pedestrians, both individually and collectively. Each fabric is designed on the simplest means for providing its function. They are based on the size of an everyday part of the urban streetscape: a parking space. This is an area that can individually accommodate a picnic table, bench, basketball hoop, fountain, garden, market, or stage. When patched together, the individual fades, the collective emerges, and the short list of functions given from the outset is multiplied and limited only by the users imagination. The fabric of 4th and 9th provides the framework for a public and flexible street.

Converting a car-cultured space into a welcoming, pleasant public place requires adding elements that are good for people and good for the world. The average block around 4th St. and 9th Ave. has between 10-30 trees lining it. This is certainly a commendable number, but the newly created public space provides an average additional 18 trees per block on 4th St. and 22 per block on 9th Ave. plus gardens, grass areas and numerous other organic elements. An increase in green, CO2 eating, heat absorbing matter, acts to decrease the heat island effect as well as the stresses that are induced on inhabitants when not given a proper amount of clean air and outdoor green space.

In addition to the street greening, car traffic is reduced at key moments within the street design. The plaza on 4th St. is shut down to cars in evenings and weekends, giving pedestrians a place to meet, eat, socialize and safely walk through their city. 9th St. is redesigned with a bottleneck to make the intersection safe and stable at all times. The street offers a single lane of bike and car traffic on each side with alternating bus pull-offs throughout. The bottleneck forces cars to slow down, giving pedestrians a safer crossing.
People are reconnected through quality spaces and social uses. The community is reconnected to nature through interactive gardens, markets, and simple observation. Park Slope is reconnected to the city through a network of bike and pedestrian paths, a user friendly transit station, and the draw of a public plaza: a social green oasis within the city.