Package
Overview
The discourse
of ‘brownfield regeneration’ has come to dominate development
agendas in the UK and much of the developed world. Brownfield regeneration
is seen as sustainable as the recycling of previously used land reduces
development pressures on greenfield sites and constitutes a re-activisation
of latent environmental and economic resources. In 2003 the Labour
government launched its Sustainable Communities programme based on
such conceptions and championed the role of brownfield regeneration
in reviving the social and economic fabric of Britain’s inner
cities. However, this discourse has the danger of homogenising ‘brownfields’
and conceptualising existing locations as blank slates to be cleaned-up,
re-packaged and sold-on. Commodification tends to undermine and de-value
the legitimacy of the physical and social assets that already exist
in urban areas. As an English Heritage report recently stated, in
relation to Thames Gateway area east of London, ‘heritage has
shown that the historic environment is an asset that acts as a catalyst
for regeneration and investment and helps to create communities with
a strong sense of local identity. The area’s heritage will play
a vital role making sure that the plan to build 120,000 new houses
in the Thames Gateway translates into the creation of thriving and
sustainable new communities that attract people to live and work in
the area’. Similarly EU directives on biodiversity require the
protection of naturally-diverse urban sites – which are almost
always brownfield – whereas government agendas highlight the
potential socio-economic benefits of building on such sites. How such
tensions are to be resolved in brownfield development agendas in the
UK has yet to be analysed in depth. Through a comparison and contrast
of two major brownfield development projects in London and Manchester,
this project assessed the ways in which brownfield sites are defined,
identified and understood in the development process; examine the
role that ‘heritage’, from cultural, spatial and real
estate perspectives, can play in the regeneration of brownfield sites;
explored the significance of conservation to the effectiveness of
brownfield regeneration; and documented the variety of understandings
and meanings ascribed to post-industrial brownfield-dominated urban
landscapes.
Package
organisation:
