The Use of Coastal Brownfields as Nature Preserves

Abstract

Brownfields have the potential to be reused as nature preserves or recreation areas. This reuse depends on the public's perceptions of risk and their willingness to support the new uses of the sites. This study examines attitudes about the reuse of large coastal brownfields from local and nonlocal students and the public. The sites include the buffer area surrounding a nuclear power plant, an area contaminated by a chemical spill, and a ranch (which was used as a control site). The results show that all the samples are more supportive of the establishment of nature preserves with human access than either nature preserves without access or developed recreation areas. Limits on human access to the sites are more acceptable for the contaminated sites and more acceptable to the nonlocal samples.Natural areas near the coast are being threatened by increasing development for residences and tourism. Brownfields, or contaminated sites, along the coast could be cleaned and used as nature preserves and recreation areas. The potential for using brownfields as recreation areas depends on people's perceptions of risk at these sites. Existing examples show that people are willing to use some types of brownfields as recreation areas.

Reuse Choice, Flood Risk and Resilience, and Characteristics of Counties with Brownfield Cleanups

“…A study of three brownfield-to-greenspace conversions found 90% of the 475 respondents agreed that greenspace creation and recreational trails were a good use of brownfields. Brownfield conversion to green reuse can contribute to mitigate flood risk in areas with higher populations of young families, children, elderly, and residents with reduced economic resources, a finding we were unable to confirm [10,12,15,52,89,90].…”

Integrated and Sustainable Management of Post-industrial Coasts

“…This framework can be applied to explore the opportunities for synergy and realization of wider environmental, economic and societal benefits between coastal protection, dredged material re-use and the management of brownfield land, as well as to support planning and options appraisal to realize maximum benefit and value from integrated coastal management strategies. The approach uses engagement with core and wider stakeholders throughout the preparation, definition and execution phases, which is critical as the effectiveness of soft re-use depends on the public's perceptions of risk and their willingness to support new uses of the sites (Levi and Kocher, 2006). There are strong synergies for these integrated soft re-use management approaches to interface with coastal flood protection and coastal habitat creation initiatives, and emerging areas such as landfill mining and resource re-use, green infrastructure approaches and city carbon neutrality targets.…”

Uncovering Patterns of Location of Brownfields to Facilitate Their Regeneration: Some Remarks from the Czech Republic

“…As reuse options for even temporary utilization of brownfields create a wide space for stakeholder creativity, this could be supported and inspired by good practices from other already regenerated sites. Brownfields thus might be temporarily reused for the development of urban agriculture [42,43], tourism [44][45][46], culture [47][48][49], or, for example, transformed into green spaces [50]. Experience from other socio-cultural contexts is of key importance to avoid obvious mistakes in brownfields management [51].…”