Potentials of Urban Brownfields for Improving the Quality of Urban Space

Abstract

Urban brownfields have been an international phenomenon for decades and are part of most industrialised countries worldwide (de Sousa 2008). Brownfields are understood as previously used land that has been abandoned and may suffer from contamination. They occur in shrinking cities as well as in growing cities. In particular, urban locations that changed from agglomerations with heavy industry to service centres transformed these urban spaces into brownfields. Several international institutions and expert networks deal with concerted actions for brownfields, to develop such valuable urban areas (CABERNET; US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), European Environmental Agency (EEA), etc.). Despite substantial efforts, many of these previously used industrial sites could not be assigned to new functions and, therefore, no further use was made available. Re-using brownfields can help to reduce the amount of newly sealed land (e.g., Rink and Banzhaf 2011). Land recycling, in particular, is considered a solution because it offers potential sites for residential and commercial constructions (EEA 2015). For the process of reurbanisation, brownfields play a particularly important role in recycling former industrial sites into land that meets the needs of today’s cities. In urban areas, land is subjected to strong dynamics and is a tenuous and competing resource, in view of ongoing global urbanisation. Therefore, the development of commercial brownfields is an important municipal task for sustainable land management. Their potential redevelopment is vital with regard to resource-efficient land management, on the one hand, and the newly developed land-use type as an option for increased urban resilience against natural hazards on the other. Consequently, redevelopment can have marked effects on the quality of life and sustainable urban development (Martinat et al. 2016; Norrman et al. 2016; Bartke et al. 2016).