Vog – Hilo term for volcano-induced fog. Vlog – CCLR term for Hilo-induced blog.
 
The vog-shrouded Hilo town is an apt visualization of the challenges in reconciling economic development with local culture, values and history, and the concealed ways brownfields redevelopment can meld some seemingly incompatible goals against monumental challenges.

I spent last weekend at the Pacific Council’s annual Members’ Weekend.  Based in Los Angeles and founded in 1995, the Pacific Council on International Policy exists to reframe international relations as a concern not only for foreign policy practitioners, but for the larger population of the U.S. West Coast.  Its members span the U.S. and work in the public, private and non-profit sectors.  The goal is to provide a non-partisan platform for learning, networking and action for people who are interested in international relations and citizen diplomacy, but who don’t work in the field on a daily basis.

The MFN conference in Carson CA brought together fence-line communities fighting to improve their environments that are impacted by extractive and goods-movement industries and ports. CCLR’s Ignacio Dayrit participated in the brownfields panels, whose purpose was to help communities construct roadmaps for the development of brownfields sites into healthfield-plus uses such as open space, urban gardens, solar farms, and income-generating community enterprises.

Written by Johanna Roth, Program Associate and Erica Rippe, Programs and Opperations Manager

Brownfields redevelopment is a notoriously long and involved process that draws on elements of urban planning, environmental science, public health, and real estate financing to make for a successful project. The City of Los Angeles has a nationally recognized Brownfields Program that works directly with property owners, community organizations and city agencies to assist with assessment, cleanup and revitalization of brownfield sites. Read more to learn about two projects that the City is working on.

Rail Yard: The Scene of the Prime

CCLR primes communities to redevelop brownfields, through partnerships, training and technical assistance. Two events from last week included a Regional Tribal Workshop (conducted with CCLR’s partner, Kansas State University) and the Arizona State Brownfields workshop.

They came in singles, pairs, families, friends, co-workers, constituents and concerned citizens. The Vision-to-Action (V2A) for the re-boot of the Fairbanks downtown plan was an evening filled with energy and promise. And it started with a broken promise - the Vision Fairbanks downtown plan that the Fairbanks assembly rescinded in July.

After Hurricane Harvey, Paul Krugman asked, “Why can’t we get cities right?”  Perhaps it’s because when we imagine a sustainable city, we are imagining something none of us has ever experienced, as Azby Brown notes in his 2009 book Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan.  While imagining a new future can be exhilarating, it can also be overwhelming.  As Puerto Rico rebuilds its electrical grid, Houston continues to recover from floods, Mexico City clears away rubble following the recent earthquake and the Florida Keys begin the long process of determining how and where to rebuild, we may do well to turn to Japan for inspiration, circa 1603.

Has your municipality incorporated sustainable or environmentally supportive strategies into your remediation and redevelopment projects? Have you reduced energy use, added renewable energy resources or created green space on underutilized land?  Have green infrastructure or resiliency projects enhanced your redevelopment results? 

With the need for infrastructure investment greater than ever, we're still waiting on Washington.

We’re all still waiting for Washington to move on infrastructure. Decades of deferred maintenance have built up and now costs hundreds of billions of dollars every year in unnecessary time, fuel and deadly accidents. While our old systems decay, we dare not dream of the next generation infrastructure that could give us the edge on our global competition, many of whom are way ahead of us in the infrastructure race.

But we need to start dreaming big again. Too many communities aren’t aging well. And today we find our built environment badly neglected at a time when changes in our natural environment seem to be accelerating. Meanwhile, our rapidly advancing economy is changing the needs of households, businesses and government at all levels.

Vacant or contaminated land may not feel or look like a community asset waiting to happen, but with the right knowledge, skills, vision and investment, these properties offer local governments and neighborhoods some of the best opportunities to transform their economies and their futures. The purpose of this white paper is to explain why brownfields redevelopment matters for communities across the U.S., and to provide a brief introduction to the brownfields redevelopment process.