The Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR) and New York Pollution Prevention Institute (NYS P2I) hosted “Innovations in Remediation and Land Reuse” in Rochester, NY on October 25, 2017.

Over 135 people attended the workshop, including city, town and county officials from the Finger Lakes to Western New York covering Monroe, Wyoming, Syracuse-Onondaga, Herkimer, Ontario and other counties across the state.  Many federal and state government agencies participated in panels and hosted Exhibitor tables, including U.S. EPA, NYS Dept of Environmental Protection, Empire State Development Corp and U.S Economic Development Administration.  A wide range of private sector experts from the fields of engineering, law, real estate, planning and financial services attended the workshop, and both staff and volunteers from non-profit organizations focused on housing, public health, and the environment contributed to the broad cross-section of stakeholders interested in brownfield redevelopment.

Meet just a few of our Redevelopment Rodeo and Developers Talk Deals presenters, and join us at the National Brownfields Training Conference to see some of the roughest, toughest properties out there go head to head with our wranglers.  Learn their names and histories, and don’t be a rodeo clown – join the discussion in Pittsburgh, and take home some good ideas for your local bucking brownfield!

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?