Understanding brownfields regeneration in the US

Abstract

Federal, state and local initiatives have emerged in the United States over the last decade to address the increasing number of ‘brownfield’ properties that are perceived to be contaminated. These initiatives are based on the beliefs that the social and financial benefits provided by redevelopment exceed the costs imposed by the interventions and that the reuse of sites can further local sustainability objectives by reducing growth pressures in undeveloped areas. This paper provides an examination of the current state of the practice of brownfields within which these interventions should be based. We summarize brownfields problems and federal, state and local efforts to address these problems. We then present ten stylized propositions about brownfields and draw on a range of surveys of the public and private sectors and other sources to explore the reality behind these. Finally we use the propositions to tie brownfields regeneration to sustainable local development through an area wide approach to redevelopment rather than a site base approach which benefits a wider community or geographic area.

Notes

1. The interested reader can find an online bibliography of scholarly and professional brownfields literature at <www.uwm.edu/MilwaukeeIdea/CEO/brownfields/bibliography> (accessed 30 March 2005).

2. Other sources of empirical data on brownfields have recently appeared but these are not entirely suitable for our purposes. For example, both the Environmental Law Institute (2002) and the Northeast–Midwest Institute (Bartsch & Deane, 2002) routinely collect information on state programmes on contaminated land, but these do not focus on individual sites. In addition, Lange and McNeil (2004a; 2004b) have surveyed a similar population as some of our own work—recipients of EPA brownfield pilot projects—and statistically analysed various aspects of brownfields. Their work, however, focuses on the drivers of successful brownfield redevelopments—such as project costs and timing, support of local leaders and the community, financing and availability of financial incentives—rather than on the wider state of brownfield practice per se. Finally, while EPA requires that all of its brownfield pilot grant recipients report information on their projects, the data are not readily accessible to the research community.

3. By this we mean that if for each brownfield project in our sample we calculate a ratio of the median income of the census tract where the project is located to the median income of the metropolitan area where the project is located the average ratio is 0.75.

4. See, for example, <www.mkedcd.org/brownfields/bfsites.html > (accessed 11 October 2004)

5. The figure of 4.5 acres of greenspace preserved for every brownfield acre is an average. The median amount of greenspace preserved for every brownfield acre developed estimated from the same data is 1.7 acres.

6. Our questionnaire presented respondents with a hypothetical scenario of a contaminated site at which a developer was contemplating a multi-unit residential development project. In addition to project financials—expected land purchase, investigation, remediation and redevelopment costs and expected gross returns on the property—we offered a number of different factors that could change the developer's expected return on the site. We asked each public sector respondent to rank the importance of each of the factors in the developer's decision about whether to purchase the property.