Evidence-Informed strategies for promoting equitability in brownfields redevelopment

Meeting the Water and Sanitation Challenges of Underbounded Communities in the U.S

Water and sanitation (wastewater) infrastructure in the United States is aging and deteriorating, with massive underinvestment over the past several decades. For many years, lack of attention to water and sanitation infrastructure has combined with racial segregation and discrimination to produce uneven access to water and wastewater services resulting in growing threats to human and environmental health. In many metropolitan areas in the U.S., those that often suffer disproportionately are residents of low-income, minority communities located in urban disadvantaged unincorporated areas on the margins of major cities. Through the process of underbounding (the selective expansion of city boundaries to exclude certain neighborhoods often based on racial demographics or economics), residents of these communities are disallowed municipal citizenship and live without piped water, sewage lines, and adequate drainage or flood control. This Perspective identifies the range of water and sanitation challenges faced by residents in these communities. We argue that future investment in water and sanitation should prioritize these communities and that interventions need to be culturally context sensitive. As such, approaches to address these problems must not only be technical but also social and give attention to the unique geographic and political setting of local infrastructures.

Spatial Distribution and Land Development Parameters of Shopping Centers Based on GIS Analysis: A Case Study on Kraków, Poland

The progressive development of shopping centers in the world affects the urban structure of cities. These facilities are constantly evolving, which also entails changes in the way their vicinity is shaped. In this context, this article deals with the trend in the way of locating and developing shopping center areas, showing the changes taking place over the years. The subject of investigations are the areas of Kraków’s shopping centers—their spatial distribution and the way the land is developed. The aim of the research was to characterize and assess the spatial development of the analyzed shopping centers, to determine the trends in the location and characteristic urban indicators. This made it possible to verify whether possible changes in the way new investments of this type are shaped should be sought in order to improve the quality of the urban environment. To assess the spatial distribution of shopping centers, standard deviation ellipse analysis was used, as well as the nearest neighbor method. In order to determine the parameters of development of shopping centers, basic urban indicators were used, i.e., building plot ratio (BPR), floor area ratio (FAR), and green plot ratio (GPR). Spatial analysis was performed using QGIS software. Studies have shown that brownfield investments are scattered along the north–south axis of the city, while greenfield investments are located at a greater distance from its central area. Over the years, there has been a gradual concentration of shopping centers, but they are still characterized by dispersion. The results of analyses of changes in the land development of their areas indicate that over the years there has been an imperceptible trend of creating objects occupying an increasing part of the investment plot. In turn, the share of total leaf area of greenery is slightly reduced. With the increase in distance from the city center, indicators regarding the floor area and gross floor area of shopping centers are clearly decreasing. On the other hand, the share of greenery increases mildly, although this index remains at a level not exceeding 20%. These results indicate the need to take action to enforce a greater share of greenery within the areas of shopping centers and the need to care for the quality of their surroundings in order to ensure sustainable spatial development of the city.

Decision-Making Support for Housing Projects in Post-Industrial Areas

Post-industrial areas, despite often showing immense damage and high soil contamination, equally often stand out via many positive assets, displaying immense potential. Post-industrial areas, in most cases, commemorate the modernisation and development of a country’s market in urban space. It is expressed in surviving buildings and urban complexes, many of which possess high historical and aesthetic value. We reviewed the literature, identified gaps and demonstrated that this subject is relevant and topical. Insofar as analyses of the urban and architectural structure of post-industrial heritage and assessments of their potential use appear often in the literature, we found that scholars rarely discussed redeveloping post-industrial areas via housing projects. The publications, methods and tools we discussed lacked solutions that could support decision-making in redeveloping post-industrial areas into housing while accounting for the needs and requirements of all stakeholders. Our initial study was based on an online survey performed among a group of specialist experts with close ties to the Polish construction market. Due to the specificity of decayed and degraded areas, any action taken entails high risk and requires a broad range of analyses, which are often not carried out due to said specificity. The main focus of our study was to determine the need to develop a new tool and the necessity of accounting for aspects that directly affect housing projects to be sited in post-industrial areas. As a result, we demonstrated that Polish practitioners displayed a need for a tool to be developed that could aid in decision-making and assessing the potential of redeveloping post-industrial areas into housing areas and that would account for the legal, organisational, technical and economic aspects and that of market analysis.

Spatial Evolution of Urban Expansion in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Coordinated Development Region

Against the background of coordinated development of the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region (BTH), it is of great significance to quantitatively reveal spatiotemporal dynamics of urban expansion for optimizing the layout of urban land across regions. However, the urban expansion characteristics, types and trends, and spatial coevolution (including urban land, GDP, and population) have not been well investigated in the existing research studies. This study presents a new spatial measure that describes the difference of the main trend direction. In addition, we also introduce a new method to classify an urban expansion type based on other scholars. The results show the following: (1) The annual urban expansion area (UEA) in Beijing and Tianjin has been ahead of that in Hebei; the annual urban expansion rate (UER) gradually shifted from the highest in megacities to the highest in counties; the high–high clusters of the UEA presented an evolution from a “seesaw” pattern to a “dumbbell” pattern, while that of the UER moved first from Beijing to Tianjin and eventually to Hebei. (2) Double high speed for both UEA and UER was the main extension type; most cities presented a U-shaped trend. (3) Qinhuangdao has the largest difference between the main trend direction of spatial distribution of urban land, GDP and population; the spatial distribution of GDP is closer to that of urban land than population. (4) The area and proportion of land occupied by urban expansion varied greatly across districts/counties. BTH experienced dramatic urban expansion and has a profound impact on land use. These research results can provide a data basis and empirical reference for territorial spatial planning.

Engaging students in planning for superfund site remediation and redevelopment

Communities with contaminated lands are also often the most vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate such as sea-level rise, increased temperatures, and extreme storms and hurricanes due to socio-economic and historic reasons - some of the very factors that enable the creation of these contaminated sites in these communities. In spite of, and arguably because of, this double exposure and impact, the ability of these communities to clean up and reuse their contaminated lands has not kept up with their need. Researchers have often attributed this discrepancy to a lack of technical capacity and human resource. To address this lack, since January 2018, students enrolled in planning-related courses offered by the University of West Florida Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences have engaged with stakeholders on the redevelopment of superfund sites located in Pensacola, FL under the auspices of the USEPA's College Underserved Community Partnership Program. The engagement centered on the reuse of two of these superfund sites for the betterment of the stakeholders' socio-economies and their biophysical environments. I focus in this paper on four examples of engaging with students in planning for superfund site remediation and redevelopment. The examples are of engaging with county staff; collaboratively engaging with city staff and a private firm; engaging with county commissioners; and engaging with a private firm between two superfund sites over the course of one year. I highlight the contextual, unique needs, of each stakeholder group yet emphasize the applicable lessons across all four examples. I also focus on best practices to develop plans and outlines for mutually beneficial products and outcomes for both students and stakeholder groups in the process of land revitalization.

The sedimented social histories of environmental cleanups: An ethnography of social and institutional dynamics

The scrutiny of environmental cleanups within the United States has been a growing area of interest for social scientists. Scholars have used case studies and modeling to analyze struggles for environmental justice and the economics of stigma associated with Superfund sites. This research has primarily analyzed community perspectives on remediation and removal, such as local strategies for participating in cleanup decisions. There has been less work on analyzing organizational perspectives on the social and institutional dynamics at play during cleanups. Our study addresses this gap by analyzing insights gained through interviewing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency staff who do cleanup work in brownfields, Superfund, and emergency response. This ethnographic research excavates the sedimented layers of social histories of contaminated sites: local and regional contexts, institutional power and authority, and stakeholder relationships and networks. It interrogates how these sedimented social histories affect cleanup decisions, including the temporal and spatial boundaries of sites themselves. We find that the making of relationships is as important to cleanup strategies and outcomes as the scientific and technical aspects of cleanup are. This finding highlights the importance of tools and resources to excavate these social histories during environmental remediation, removal, and decontamination work.

INSIDE: An efficient guide for sustainable remediation practice in addressing contaminated soil and groundwater

Modeling criteria interaction in decision-making problems is complex and often neglected. In complicated problems, like contaminated site remediation projects, independency of involved criteria is not a realistic assumption. INfluence based deciSIon guiDE (INSIDE) is a methodology that enables sustainable decision making and management in contaminated site remediation practice. Unlike most previous decision-support methods, INSIDE considers realistic interactions among all involved criteria. The method not only gives a one-time best option for choosing a remediation method for the project at hand, but also a management plan for further improvements of the system. INSIDE recognizes economic, environmental, social, and technological considerations for the most sustainable practice. Eight criteria are defined based on these aspects and they can be interrelated. This means that a criterion, e.g., remediation time, does not need to belong to any pre-defined category such as economic, environmental, social, or technical, but can interact with other criteria. This allows for a system with many degrees of freedom that is more realistic for practical problem-solving. In INSIDE, the DEcision MAking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) techniques are combined for assigning weights to criteria and scoring of remediation alternatives, respectively. Thus, the proposed methodology gives a managerial cone of influence versus importance for all involved criteria in the system. The method is applied to a data-scarce case study in Iran to prioritize between remediation methods for a contaminated groundwater aquifer. The results show that human health risk and environmental impacts are more influential than other evaluated criteria. The suggested methodology should be further tested on a variety of actual remediation problems for additional evaluation.