Community Landscape Preferences for Reuse of Soviet‐Era Post‐Agricultural Brownfields—What's the Difference?*

Abstract

Reuse preferences for post‐agricultural brownfields on former socialist agricultural premises in CEE countries are likely to be diverse and may depend on communities' experiences. Our research question is to reveal, through a questionnaire survey of 774 respondents from 180 communities, the difference in reuse preferences among communities with different experiences: communities where former collective farm sites had been abandoned (leaving a post‐agricultural brownfield), those where such sites had remained in continuous agricultural use, and those where such sites had been abandoned and later remediated or reused. The responses from the three types of communities were compared using Kruskal–Wallis tests and the structure of preferences was analyzed by Non‐Metric Multidimensional Scaling. Communities with an existing post‐agricultural brownfield prefer housing and leisure activities, while communities with sites in continuous agricultural production prefer agrarian uses. Two main poles of choice were identified—productive and non‐productive uses. While productive uses are preferred by respondents from communities with continuous agricultural production, non‐productive uses are preferred by communities with former post‐agricultural brownfields. The presence of post‐agricultural brownfields within the community is an important factor in determining a community's preferences for its reuse. When agricultural sites are abandoned, communities' preferences for its reuse also change.