Environmental Policy Analysis and Practice

Chapter 1: The Reaction of Elected Officials and Staff Criterion: The Brownfields Redevelopment Policy

Introduction Brownfields are abandoned or underutilized factories, commercial structures, rail yards, gasoline stations, and other visible urban environmental scars left in the wake of over a century of industrialization and subsequent de-industrialization in the United States. Estimates of the number of brownfield sites in this country range from , to  million (National Governors Association, ; Simons, ). The U.S. government formally defines them as a “real property, the expansion , redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], ). Most brownfields do not represent a serious threat to public health or the environment, but some are so repulsive that they act as neighborhood cancers, spreading blight (Greenberg et al., ). I visited scores of industrial neighborhoods during the s and s, and I would walk away shaking my head in disbelief and despair. It is essential that these eyesores be identified, controlled, remediated to a safe level, and brought back into productive use. The effects of brownfield properties are, for the most part, confined to the immediate neighborhood in which they are located. Hence, most of the efforts aimed at returning them to safe and productive use are local. Although federal and state governments can catalyze brownfields redevelopment by providing information, funds, and technical assistance, mayors, local governing bodies, and their staffs pull the political strings. City hall must therefore direct the creation of a municipal plan that incorporates former brownfield sites into a vision for the future. The mayor (or a designee) must motivate the city bureaucracy to support the idea and persuade not-for-profit organizations to provide moral and/or financial support. The mayor has to inspire local people to support (or at least not oppose) redevelopment and persuade business and state and federal governments to provide funds for demolition, remediation, and new projects. In this chapter, I 13 1 The Reaction of Elected Officials and Staff Criterion The Brownfields Redevelopment Policy use mayors and brownfields environmental policy to illustrate the reaction of elected officials and staff policy criterion. Theme: Brownfields Redevelopment and Interconnected Policy Themes The brownfields policy intersects with policy options for controlling sprawl and managing the legacy of industrial hazardous waste. The first two sections of this chapter describe these two critical linkages. Brownfields Redevelopment and Smart Growth Policies Brownfields redevelopment is a separate policy activity that has been pursued for well over a century, especially in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, as an approach for rehabilitating declining neighborhoods and reclaiming land (Dennison, ; Towers, ). In the United States, brownfields redevelopment has been tethered to control of sprawl as a so-called smart-growth policy option. Briefly, sprawl is low-density development of housing, commercial, and industrial development in formerly undeveloped areas often referred to as “greenfields.” Sprawled developments leapfrog developed areas with existing infrastructure and thus need new water and sewerage system connections; new or substantial additions to schools, police, and fire services; and road expansion to accommodate an automobile-oriented lifestyle. People think of low-density single-family homes on what were farms as prototypical sprawl. But large-box shopping malls, garden apartment units, and spread-out production facilities can also be considered sprawl if they leapfrog into open space; incur major infrastructure additions; destroy important ecosystems; cause massive traffic jams; and in other ways burden people, communities, and the environment. In contrast to sprawl, smart growth clusters people and their activities in central places and along corridors. Efforts are focused on filling in skipped-over areas in cities and older suburbs, redeveloping already developed parcels such as brownfields, and concentrating new greenfield development in clusters adjacent to existing infrastructure. In addition to urban redevelopment, there are five other major options for achieving or promoting smart growth. I will summarize them briefly because they are very different from brownfields redevelopment. Changing transportation policies is one option (Cervero, ). Government subsidies of highway construction and maintenance, low gasoline prices and taxes, differences between urban and rural car insurance, and many other government-sponsored or permitted actions have sustained sprawl. Reducing or revoking these subsidies would make it more difficult to continue to build in undeveloped areas. Government can provide incentives for high-density development in specific urban locations by building light rail lines, providing more bus service and bus lanes, and subsidizing mass transit...