Greening the Browns: A Bio-Based Land Use Framework for Analysing the Potential of Urban Brownfields in an Urban Circular Economy

Enhancing multiple benefits of brownfield cleanups by applying ecosystem services concepts

Brownfields are increasingly called upon to be transformed from potentially contaminated, often vacant properties into community assets that provide multiple benefits. Further, brownfields revitalization can provide critical opportunities and, particularly, nature-based solutions can enhance multiple ecological, human health, and economic benefits. Through a series of non-exhaustive surveys of existing examples of environmental benefits of cleanups, case study examples of brownfield cleanups achieving environmental benefits, and potential ecosystem services tools relevant to steps of a brownfields cleanup effort, we explore practical ideas for enhancing environmental benefits of brownfields cleanups by applying ecosystem services concepts. Examples of nature-based solutions, where appropriate, include the use of rain gardens, permeable pavements, green spaces, and the use of green technologies. Further, this article provides an overview of recent policy initiatives focused on nature-based solutions and enhancing ecosystem services in brownfields cleanup, revitalization, and reuse. Our goals are to increase the knowledge base on these opportunities and discuss how these concepts can be achieved through sharing success stories, making outreach materials accessible, and holding workshops to help successfully operationalize these concepts in a community's visioning for upcoming revitalization projects.

Beyond Cleansing: Ecosystem Services Related to Phytoremediation

Phytotechnologies used for cleaning up urban and suburban polluted soils (i.e., brownfields) have shown some weakness in the excessive extent of the timeframe required for them to be effectively operating. This bottleneck is due to technical constraints, mainly related to both the nature of the pollutant itself (e.g., low bio-availability, high recalcitrance, etc.) and the plant (e.g., low pollution tolerance, low pollutant uptake rates, etc.). Despite the great efforts made in the last few decades to overcome these limitations, the technology is in many cases barely competitive compared with conventional remediation techniques. Here, we propose a new outlook on phytoremediation, where the main goal of decontaminating should be re-evaluated, considering additional ecosystem services (ESs) related to the establishment of a new vegetation cover on the site. The aim of this review is to raise awareness and stress the knowledge gap on the importance of ES associated with this technique, which can make phytoremediation a valuable tool to boost an actual green transition process in planning urban green spaces, thereby offering improved resilience to global climate change and a higher quality of life in cities. This review highlights that the reclamation of urban brownfields through phytoremediation may provide several regulating (i.e., urban hydrology, heat mitigation, noise reduction, biodiversity, and CO₂ sequestration), provisional (i.e., bioenergy and added-value chemicals), and cultural (i.e., aesthetic, social cohesion, and health) ESs. Although future research should specifically be addressed to better support these findings, acknowledging ES is crucial for an exhaustive evaluation of phytoremediation as a sustainable and resilient technology.

Transforming brownfields into urban greenspaces: A working process for stakeholder analysis

Urban greenspaces (UGS) provide a range of ecosystem services and are instrumental in ensuring the liveability of cities. Whilst incorporating UGS in increasingly denser cities is a challenge to planners, brownfields form a latent resource with the potential of being converted into UGS. Transformation of brownfields to greenspaces, however, requires engagement of a variety of stakeholders, from providers to users. The overall aim of this study was to support effective and realistic realisations of UGS in the context of urban brownfields' regeneration and stakeholder engagement. A working process was developed to: 1) integrate methods relevant for UGS realisation for a) identification and categorising of relevant stakeholders, b) mapping their interests and resources, c) identifying various challenges, and d) matching those challenges with the mapped resources over the timeline of UGS development; and 2) apply these methods to assess relevance and shortcomings. The methods were applied to a study site in Sweden, and data was collected using a questionnaire survey. The survey received 31 responses and the respondents' comments indicated that the combination of several uses, especially integrated with an urban park, is preferable. Visualisation was an important component for data analysis: stakeholder categorisation was effectively visualised using a Venn diagram, and the needed mobilisation of resources among stakeholders to manage identified challenges was visualised using a timeline. The analysis demonstrates the need for collaboration between stakeholders to achieve an effective realisation of UGS and how multiple methods can be used in concert to map stakeholders, preferences, challenges, and resources for a particular site. The application at a study site provided site-specific data but the developed stakeholder categorisation, and the method for matching identified challenges with the stakeholders' resources using a timeline, can be generalised to applications at other sites.

Landscape-Based Transformation of Young Industrial Landscapes

Due to deindustrialisation, young industrial landscapes (YILs), stemming roughly from the 1930s to the 1970s and located in the suburbs of Copenhagen, are partly abandoned, partly in use, and partly used for non-industrial purposes. By virtue of their location, size, and unused and underused subareas, YILs can potentially meet major urbanisation aims, such as densification and mixed-use development, yet the redevelopment of YILs often happens from a hypothetical virgin land position, disregarding the existing features of these sites. In this paper, we aim to introduce value-sustaining strategies for a more site-informed transformation of YILs. The specific objective is to investigate and understand the landscape-based transformation of young industrial landscapes by making explicit use of their site features in what we label the landscape. Based on a literature study of the emerging phenomenon, a screening of landscape-based projects and a case study, we present a set of qualifying strategies to guide future landscape-based transformations: porosity, reuse, re-naturing, and open-endedness. The complimentary spatial, multi-scalar, and temporal strategies were demonstrated through the study of the five European cases: Alter Flugplatz Kalbach, Hersted Industripark, IBA Emscher Park, Louvre Lens Museum Park, and Parc aux Angéliques, to exemplify how the strategies could guide the landscape-based transformation of YILs or similar types of large-scale landscapes. Although apparently straight forward, the formulation of the four strategies linking ethics and transformation practices provides a much needed set of values and tools in the current, and also historical, redevelopment of YILs, which are a significant part of our urbanised landscapes, to better address societal challenges.

A risk management framework for Gentle Remediation Options (GRO)

Gentle Remediation Options (GRO) are remediation measures involving plants, fungi, bacteria, and soil amendments that can be applied to manage risks at contaminated sites. Several studies and decision-support tools promote the wider range of benefits provided by GRO, but there is still skepticism regarding GRO implementation. Key issues that need to be better communicated are the various risk mitigation mechanisms, the required risk reduction for an envisioned land use, and the time perspective associated with the risk mitigation mechanisms. To increase the viability and acceptance of GRO, the phytomanagement approach implies the combination of GRO with beneficial green land use, gradually reducing risks and restoring ecosystem services. To strengthen the decision basis for GRO implementation in practice, this paper proposes a framework for risk management and communication of GRO applications to support phytomanagement strategies at contaminated sites. The mapping of the risk mitigation mechanisms is done by an extensive literature review and the Swedish national soil guideline value model is used to derive the most relevant human health exposure pathways and ecological risks for generic green land use scenarios. Results indicate that most of the expected risk mitigation mechanisms are supported by literature, but that knowledge gaps still exist. The framework is demonstrated to support the identification of GRO options for the case study site given two envisioned land uses: biofuel park and allotment garden. A more easily understandable risk management framework, as proposed here, is expected to act as a communication tool to educate decision-makers, regulatory bodies and other stakeholders for better understanding of risk mitigation mechanisms and preliminary timeframes of various GRO, particularly in the early stages of a brownfield redevelopment project.

INSIDE-T: A Groundwater Contamination Transport Model for Sustainability Assessment in Remediation Practice

Current sustainability assessment (SA) tools to help deal with contaminated groundwater sites are inherently subjective and hardly applied. One reason may be lack of proper tools for addressing contaminant spread which are basically objective. To fill this gap, there is a need for contaminant transport models that provide site managers with needed room for applying their judgments and considerations about the efficiency of each remediation method based on their experiences in similar cases. INSIDE-T uses trend analysis and inverse modeling to estimate transport parameters. It then simulates contaminant transport both with and without the inclusion of remedial actions in a transparent way. The sustainability of each remedy measure can then be quantified based on the underlying SA tool (INSIDE). INSIDE-T was applied to a site in south Sweden, contaminated with pentachlorophenol. Simulation scenarios were developed to enable comparison between various remediation strategies and combinations of these. The application indicated that natural attenuation was not a viable option within the timeframe of interest. Although pump-and-treat combined with a permeable reactive barrier was found to be just as effective as bioremediation after five years, it received a much lower sustainability score overall. INSIDE-T outcomes enable site managers to test and evaluate different scenarios, a necessity in participatory decision-making practices such as remediation projects.

An Economic Analysis of Brownfield and Greenfield Industrial Parks Investment Projects: A Case Study of Eastern Slovakia

The implementation of industrial park investment projects in relation to the use of brownfields and greenfields is a constantly debated issue. Brownfields are unused areas, often with devastated building objects and environmental burden that pose potential risks to the investor but also contain the possibility of using the available infrastructure and facilities for the use of the proposed investment project. The objective of the study was to assess the positive and negative investment of these types of sites based on the available information on the possibilities of investing in the implementation of the brownfield industrial park compared to the greenfield in the western part of East Slovak region and to identify a more appropriate alternative of investing. Based on the assessment of investment in the industrial parks, the appropriateness of the allocation of investment capital was assessed through the simple additive weighting (SAW) method. The SAW approach allows us to objectivize the weighting value of selected factors and thus assess the appropriateness of the allocation of investment capital. Based on the results, it is more advantageous to allocate the investment capital to the greenfield as the return on investment of the project expressed as a percentage of the average annual profit was 9.5%, compared to brownfield with only 2.9%.

Abandoned Places and Urban Marginalized Sites in Lugoj Municipality, Three Decades after Romania’s State-Socialist Collapse

The postsocialist process of urban restructuring came with important spatial, social, and economic consequences. This triggered important transformations that remain palpable in the everyday texture of urban life, spatial patterns, and even the internal structures of the city. Every urban settlement was bound to contribute to the state socialist industry so that postsocialist urban transformations also included multiple aspects of dereliction and ruination of the socialist industrial assets. Threatening postsocialist urban formations and sustainability, the most common feature is collective neglect at national, regional, and local scales. The transition from state-socialist forms of production to the current market-based system poses many difficulties. This article specifically investigates the problems of urban industrial ruins in Lugoj—which are typical for medium-sized postsocialist municipalities in Romania. The research draws on qualitative data gathered by the authors through semi-structured interviews, personal communication, and oral histories and continuous infield observation (2012–2019). The findings unveil the production and the reproduction of abandoned spaces in Romanian urban settlements in the absence of specific regeneration programs and policies on urban redevelopment and marginalized areas. The analysis reveals that urban ruins harm the quality of life in local communities, damaging both the urban landscape and local sustainability. Further actions for local urban regeneration are urgently needed.