Growing urban populations are placing pressure on local governments to provide solutions to the challenges that this migration creates. One of these main challenges is: ‘where do these additional people live, work and recreate?’ Many modern cities grew on the back of industry but in modern times these industries have become obsolete or unable to compete with global competition. As such, many industrial areas within our towns and cities are not the central, thriving areas they once were. To make better use of the prime, inner-city real estate that these areas occupy, brownfield sites are being identified for redevelopment into new inner city mixed use suburbs as one way to accommodate growing population demands. Examples of this approach can be seen in Neu Oerlikon, Zurich, Canary Wharf and Melbourne Docklands. Watch: M Docklands – Melbourne’s Waterfront Living Melbourne is 300ha of former docks in Port of Melbourne which became obsolete after containerisation. It was the subject of development proposals for years but lacked funding. Construction of a new sports stadium was the catalyst for investment into the area. Government and developers combined to improve infrastructure. Now it offers a range of retail, leisure and residential facilities, 3.7ha of public space including 3 parks as well as being the location for many businesses and major head offices. Development is continuing to increase the capacity of workers and residents and to provide schools and sports facilities. Challenging Times There can however be a number of challenges with undertaking this transformation. For one, brownfield is often contaminated land, in some cases limiting development options. This does provide opportunities for strategies including bioremediation – using plants to clean soils of pollutants. This can be timely and limited in its effectiveness, but it allows for a temporary or transitional use of the land which has environmental benefits, cleaning the land for future development. Alternatively, it may be decided that greening the brownfield is the end goal. Watch: It’s My Park: Freshkills – Staten Island Freshkills Park in New York for example is a large new park project being built on top of what was formerly the world’s largest landfill site. Some other well-known examples of parks constructed on brownfield include Duisburg Nord Park in Germany, Gas Works Park in Seattle, Tianjin’s Qiaoyuan Wetland Park and The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London which is being further developed into a complete new community. These places have strong identities and are open to all user groups. They offer something unique and have transformed underused land into quality public spaces.
Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord. Credit: Ra’ike, CC 3.0
Gasworks Park, Seattle. Photo credit: Jules Antonio, CC 2.0
