In December 2019, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership unveiled one of the more ambitious ideas for remaking an American city.

A master plan, devised by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and WXY and first reported by CityLab, called for a neighborhood network of Dutch-style shared streets, busways, protected bike lanes and revamps to key green spaces. It was a pedestrian-centric rebuke of the Robert Moses-era planning that dominates much of the borough, where cars flood wide streets en route to the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.

Then 2020 happened, and the call to reclaim space from cars only grew louder during the pandemic.