The Abandoned Industrial Sites - Can Standards Contribute to Prevent Them?

Abstract

Post industrial societies are faced with economic, social, cultural as well as urban changes. Through the years, in many regions of the world, failing economy resulted in the decline or even ending of industrial activities. The urban environments are faced with closure of industrial facilities and abandoned industrial buildings and sites. Economic, environmental, social, cultural, aesthetic and urban problems of abandoned industrial sites are too complex and often overcome capabilities of local community or administration, so the need for a multi stakeholder approach is evident. Many countries, no meter of their economical strength, face the problems of decommissioning industrial sites. The aim of this paper is to argue about environmental aspects of redevelopment of contaminated industrial sites, standardization of good practices in the decommissioning of industrial sites process, as well as prevention of contaminated brownfields. Decommissioning of industrial sites is a complex problem, due to industry, product or location specific issues; high costs as well as absence of know-how. In the case of the redevelopment of brownfields, the problem of contamination has to be properly addressed. However, strict and high clean-up standards can inhibit land reuse and in order to redevelop more brownfield properties some customizations of clean-up standards are needed. The intended future use of the site is increasingly a determining factor when setting cleaning objectives (James and Kovalick, 2000). Of the highest importance is that urban planning consideration of future land use should be done with proper environmental, health and safety risk analysis. More and more calls for addressing the legal as well as the urban, technological, environmental and economic issues associated with the end-of-service life of modern industrial sites is evident. Extended industrial design responsibility or "planning the funeral at the birth" might be a new task for industrial sites designers and urban planners.