Known for: Prospect Park is a main attraction, housing a plethora of facilities including a zoo, ice-skating rink, boathouse and band shell. On nearby streets, young, middle-class couples push baby strollers alongside funky, artistic types off to sip brunch mimosas at one of the district's fine restaurants.

Boundaries: Stretching from Prospect Park West to 4th Avenue, Park Place to Prospect Expressway.

Borders: Prospect Heights and Carroll Gardens

Subway stops: F to 7th Avenue

 OUTLOOK

The basics: As the families that fed the area’s nineties boom—many of them Upper West Side transplants—continue to dominate the area around the park, younger and artier refugees have settled near Fifth Avenue. Townhouses are the dwelling of choice, but the ones that hit the market tend to be fixer-uppers, and even those are no longer inexpensive. One- and two-bedroom apartments in larger buildings are relatively plentiful.

What's new: The sixteen-story Shinnecock luxury condos at Union Street, near Prospect Park, opened in 2002 and were the first new prime Slope development in decades. New buildings will also soon be popping up at President, Carroll, and 5th Streets between Fourth and Fifth Avenues—an area that wasn’t even considered Park Slope ten years ago. “There’s no other place to build,” says Corcoran’s Patricia Neinast.

Bargain hunting: Look on the fringes—the western flank close to Fifth Avenue and buildings on Flatbush.

Prediction: The Slope sure has boomed, but it probably won’t go much higher, at least for now. If the market falls off its current plateau, “what will do best is anything in a prime location,” says Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy & Garfield’s Neil Stein, “and anything that’s large will hold its value.” More vulnerable are one-bedrooms—a luxury for singles but too small for families. On the edges, Flatbush Avenue—with abundant services and subways—might be better off than Fourth Avenue and the Gowanus hinterlands.

— Profile from the March 10, 2003 cover story of New York Magazine