The eastern end of Derbyshire Street was previously a dead-end with only one function: space for twelve car-parking bays. Despite the surrounding urban spaces being a hive of activity, the dead-end provided only an opportunity for anti-social behaviour and fly-tipping.It was transformed to take advantage of its ignored potential: a south-facing aspect, overlooking Weaver’s Fields park, to become a new outdoor café space and shared pedestrian / bike route.The new pocket park features a range of sustainable urban drainage components aimed at reducing pressure on London’s sewer system. This includes green roof bike racks, attenuating planters, permeable paving and the central rain garden. This brings enhanced biodiversity and offers an insight into the potential future aesthetics of the public realm.The pocket park is a functioning space, interconnected by a series of SuDS components. The spatial layout revolves around this functionality making it an important benchmark – a showcase for the overt role a small piece of public realm can play within the wider cityscape and environment.Despite the apparent simplicity, the landscape design offers an effective and robust approach to retrofitting the public realm to better suit contemporary issues such as biodiversity and climate change adaption. Many of the technical aspects used can be applied to similar scenarios elsewhere, making it an exemplar project for the built environment profession.The local community have benefitted from this by an obvious improvement to the streetscape – the transformation of an ignored dead-end into a useful community focused pocket park with purpose.