More than 300 people got the chance Sunday night to see what developer Peter M. Mocco's proposed 75-acre residential and retail neighborhood for Liberty Harbor North on the Morris Canal may look like.

The slides were central to a presentation by urban planner Andre Duany of the Miami firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., whose architects traveled to cities around the world to come up with the right elements for the area from Grand Avenue to the waterfront.

Among the ideas:

• No space will be wasted. Buildings will be interesting and varied, but there will be no room for wide-open driveways, wide streets, lawns or shrubbery.
  "In Manhattan and in your best streets here, you're always walking past something interesting,'' Duany said. "Bushes and shrubs aren't interesting."
• A 24-classroom school will be built into an apartment building near Liberty State Park. The idea, which has been tried in New York City, allows the school board to place a school in a neighborhood for a fraction of what it would cost to purchase acres of land on its own. The school would be on the first floor and apartments would be above.
• Double tree-lined sidewalks and narrow streets that enhance pedestrian life. Duany said that studies show narrow streets compel traffic to travel slowly and make the neighborhood safer.
• Tile buildings would vary in height, giving the city's skyline "a mountainous shape" that starts high on the east and ends low on the west. It's the way lower Manhattan appeared before the World Trade Center was built, Duany said.

"This project will bring the city back to what it used to be," Duany said. "It's a return to its origins, to its heyday."

Sunday night's meeting in City Hall followed six days of public input in which Duany said he "took into account the desires and fears of neighbors" who would be affected by the project.

"The open-mindedness that we found here is very rare," Duany said, noting that other areas of the country have opposed growth and urban development.

Duany said his firm has done 140 projects around the world, but added that the 3ersey City project would be his most highprofile example of "new urbanism," a philosophy of homes mixed in seamlessly with retail stores and other types of spaces.

"If it's built anything like we designed it, it will be the most famous example of new urbanism in the country," Duany said. "This is the best."

Duany's team of architects worked with Manhattan architects to come up with a varied style. They studied the way some of Manhattan's most impressive townhouses were built and also visited, areas of Jersey City and Hoboken to compare styles.

"We went to the best streets, the best promenades and the best waterfronts," he said. The reaction from the standing-room only crowd was positive. Jersey City resident Julie Benson, who said she owns property near the area, was excited because "property values are certain to go up" because of the project.

City planners and other officials also attended the meeting, but said they had no immediate comment.

Mocco, a former North Bergen mayor and county freeholder, said he visited other projects that Duany had completed. " It was staggering," he said. "We came back to Jersey City and said, 'This is something worthwhile that we think we can make happen here.'"