Reclaiming Brownfields

Reclaiming Brownfields
Author: Richard C. Hula
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2016-03-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317070623

The environmental legacy of past industrial and agricultural development can simultaneously pose serious threats to human health and impede reuse of contaminated land. The urban landscape around the world is littered with sites contaminated with a variety of toxins produced by past use. Both public and private sector actors are often reluctant to make significant investments in properties that simultaneously pose significant potential human health issues, and may demand complex and very expensive cleanups. The chapters in this volume recognize that land and water contamination are now almost universally acknowledged to be key social, economic, and political issues. How multiple societies have attempted to craft and implement public policy to deal with these issues provides the central focus of the book. The volume is unique in that it provides a global comparative perspective on brownfield policy and examples of its use in a variety of countries.

Brownfields

Brownfields
Author: United States. General Accounting Office
Publisher:
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2000
Genre: Brownfields
ISBN:

Report to the Chairman, Committee on Commerce, House of Representatives.

Sustainable Brownfield Development

Sustainable Brownfield Development
Author: Christopher De Sousa
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2021-07-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1000401480

While industrial and chemical innovations have contributed extensively to human advancement, the darker part of their legacy has been the hundreds of thousands of polluted sites left behind. Governments at all levels have rallied to support the remediation and reuse of these land resources and put many of the nation’s brownfields back into productive use. This book presents two dozen brownfield projects in the United States that have incorporated sustainability, highlighting project features, best management practices, and lessons from the field regarding the underlying policies and practices that enabled these projects to be completed or, in some cases, stalled, altered or abandoned. The case studies represent an array of brownfield projects that aimed to go beyond conventional practice and include a range and variety of end uses (e.g., corner gas stations, industrial, office, residential, brightfields, green space, mixed-use, and transit-oriented developments). The cases investigate site histories, planning and development and examine sustainability characteristics to understand how projects overcame the barriers to brownfield reuse and the implementation of sustainability features and derive a series of lessons learned, including innovative policies, programs, and/or funding mechanisms that helped make these projects work. Sustainable Brownfield Development will be of interest to developers, planners, consultants and community representatives interested in environmental policy, urban planning, community development, ecological restoration, economic development, and parks planning by providing direction and inspiration for those eager to erase the blight of the past and build a more sustainable future.

Brownfields Redevelopment and the Quest for Sustainability

Brownfields Redevelopment and the Quest for Sustainability
Author: Christopher de Sousa
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2008-03-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0080453589

Examines the role that brownfields redevelopment is playing and can play in our quest for sustainability, focusing on efforts in the US and Canada. This book looks at how brownfields are used as spaces for developing an array of residential, recreational, and employment-oriented projects that have breathed new life into the urban environment.

Urban Green

Urban Green
Author: Peter Harnik
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2012-07-16
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1597268127

For years American urban parks fell into decay due to disinvestment, but as cities began to rebound—and evidence of the economic, cultural, and health benefits of parks grew— investment in urban parks swelled. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently cited meeting the growing demand for parks and open space as one of the biggest challenges for urban leaders today. It is now widely agreed that the U.S. needs an ambitious and creative plan to increase urban parklands. Urban Green explores new and innovative ways for “built out” cities to add much-needed parks. Peter Harnik first explores the question of why urban parkland is needed and then looks at ways to determine how much is possible and where park investment should go. When presenting the ideas and examples for parkland, he also recommends political practices that help create parks. The book offers many practical solutions, from reusing the land under defunct factories to sharing schoolyards, from building trails on abandoned tracks to planting community gardens, from decking parks over highways to allowing more activities in cemeteries, from eliminating parking lots to uncovering buried streams, and more. No strategy alone is perfect, and each has its own set of realities. But collectively they suggest a path toward making modern cities more beautiful, more sociable, more fun, more ecologically sound, and more successful.