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The twentieth century has marked astounding industrial and technological changes and advances. An unfortunate by-product, however, has been the amount of industrialized land left unused or underused, often because of the presence of environmental contaminants. “Brownfields” is the term that has come to be applied to such lands — in contrast to “greenfields,” the term used to describe previously undeveloped properties on the urban fringe, often farmland.
A tour of the United States’ more industrialized cities reveals stretches of abandoned land once boasting significant industrial activity. Indeed, the General Accounting Office in its 1996 report, Barriers to Brownfield Redevelopment, noted that “sites that could be classified as brownfields probably number in the tens of thousands, totaling hundreds of thousands of acres.”
While demographic shifts and the overall trend away from heavy industry have contributed to this problem, another important factor hindering redevelopment has been environmental liabilities, both real and perceived, stemming from soil contamination and groundwater pollution.
Business owners and developers usually choose to build on greenfields, rather than brownfields — despite the fact that brownfields sites are typically served by existing roads, public transportation, utilities, and other infrastructure.
The choice to develop greenfields over brownfields is largely based on combined factors of expense and liability. Business, industry, and banks are often reluctant to consider brownfield sites for redevelopment because of the high cost to achieve stringent cleanup standards (which can often exceed the market value of the property) combined with the potential liabilities imposed under traditional federal and state environmental law.
Yet these abandoned properties, once “remediated” (i.e., cleaned up), can provide viable spaces for sustainable industries, commercial uses, and even parkland or open-spaces. …
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