Over time there has been a dramatic shift from mostly rural and urban forms to an inefficient, and wasteful grey zone. This conurbation of a dense urban environment, a diffuse urbanism, which grows larger each day, is based upon personal automobile transport, singular spacious housing plots, and mega stores with endless fields of parking. These placeless environments are detrimental to our personal, social, and environmental existence on this planet.  Asbury Park was chosen for the intervention due to its broken fabric and historical significance along the Jersey shore.

      Urban Stitching is a concept in which a broken semi-urban fabric is ‘stitched’ together to form a new mentally and physically sustainable structure.  The new fabric is based around creating a sense of community and place within the city by inserting public nodes and greenspace with a gradient of density applied to the fabric of the city.  Multiple urban blocks are ‘stitched’ together by creating a dense urban border containing the benefits and amenities of urban life, while its interior is centered around community, housing, and semi-public and private spaces.

      The inner streets of the new mega blocks are redesigned to reflect a shared street space free of curbs and focused on zones of parking and pedestrian space to slow vehicle traffic.  Structures that reflect and support the new urban fabric are kept (light grey) and the others are replaced with new ones (dark grey).  Bike lanes (light red) and trees line the new urban borders. (see above plans)