When designing how a city will develop, sometimes it is more cost efficient in the long run to preserve and restore buildings already present rather than developing new areas. The idea of creating new developments can be very appealing; however, old buildings have an undeniable worth in the cultural identity and expression context of the city. Determining which one of the two options is the most suitable is currently difficult to determine; however, the European Union has established a set of tools such as good practice databases, visualisation tools, and decision-support systems in an effort to help make a good decision about it.

Examples of buildings in which case rehabilitation may be an interesting option are old industrial sites deep within cities. These sites are used until the company decides to expand and moves to another larger site, usually out of town. The original sites, usually surrounded by housing, may be reused, and often times it is necessary to define strategies to redevelop them in a sustainable way because of their outdated infrastructure.

Specially, the regeneration of brownfield sites helps reduce urban sprawl, which leads to inefficient resource use and the degradation of inner spaces. It also helps enhance the inner city environment. The problem of brownfields is that they tend to be contaminated and dangerous, and cleaning them up can be very expensive. This situation and the fear of possible future litigations discourage developers from attempting to rehabilitate them. In addition, sometimes city halls are unable to afford the expenses of the clean up on their own; therefore, a large number of brownfields remain neglected. The EU is currently focusing on ways of solving this problem with more economically suitable technologies and decision-making tools.

One of the aspects that need special understanding is the soil’s characteristics and the way pollutants behave in it. New imaging technology for the provision of the underground features is being developed by Hygeia. Europe counts with The Concerted Action on Brownfield and Economic Regeneration Network, Cabernet, which is a network of 49 experts from 21 countries whose aim is to boost access to information and coordinate research on brownfield regeneration across Europe. Besides promoting the latest technologies, they propose new research projects and supply practical assistance in certain areas. These abandoned sites need to be integrated in urban planning. The EU is developing The Rescue project, which will assist planners and administrations on those sites. The goal is to create an on-line manual about how to deal with contamination, how to decide what to put on the site, and how to determine if the project is environmentally friendly.

In addition, another software tool destined to assist in the handling of brownsites is currently underway by Norisc, a consortium of European research groups, companies, and regulators. It works with high quantities of data such as contamination profiles from different industries, legislation from both the EU and the US, and a list of techniques and their costs and outcomes. This software helps evaluate a site, and provides assessment of the risk as well as the remediation method. In the four cities where it has been tried, a reduction by half of cost of redeveloping polluted sites has been proved, and the time taken to carry out a risk assessment by up to 80%. Further information can be obtained at: http://www.norisc.com

There are several other projects in the EU helping in the redevelopment of abandoned industrial sites. One of them is SUPER or Sustainable Urban Planning and Economic Redevelopment, which is actually a group of four projects with the goal of aiding city planners to make decisions on commercial or industrial developments. To fulfil this task they count with software capable of maximising the benefits and costs of new or redeveloped sites preventing political conflict. Specifically, the project by the name of Masurin is intended to assist five European cities in developing approaches to regenerate industrial sites inside the city. As a result, a management guide and software will be created as a means for decision-making. Another one of the SUPER projects is Ecopadev, which deals with industrial parks on the city periphery. These parks tend to have special waste, transport, and pollution problems. The tools created in these projects contemplate what companies are expected to do, procedures to reach consensus, and sets of indicators for assessing effects related to the quality of workers and residents’ lives.

In rehabilitation of developments, it should be taken into account the inclusion of green spaces. Greencluster is a group of five projects that have developed tools for integrating green areas in the city developments as well as better profiting their potential. The project called BUGS includes a method for determining the benefits of greensapaces regarding improved air quality, lower noise levels, economic gain, and quality of life. This method is expected to be available to urban and regional authorities. The decision-support package developed by Greenspace includes the perceived value of green space and allows planners and citizens to evaluate their own green spaces and visualise new plans. Spain counts with some very interesting innitiatives in this sense; developers hand over part of the land to de administration for the creation of public green areas. These developers are in charge of urbanizing the area in exchange of improving the dwelling part. The creation of green areas gives an additional worth to the new housings. Another project, URGE, works with the interactions between nature, economy, and social systems in urban environments with the purpose of finding new approaches for the design and management of green spaces within cities. The results of practitioners and researchers working together in different countries were collected into a useful handbook for practitioners.

When a building, which working life is 25 years, is replaced or renovated, foundations usually have to undergo changes. It would be very efficient to be able to use the same original foundations; however, there is usually a lack of information on their load-bearing capacity as well as an accepted way of testing them. Seven European research groups have joined efforts and come up with a Best Practice Handbook on reusing foundations, including a method to test their strength, upgrade them and install new multi-use foundations. This document is available since 2006. Additional information can be obtained at http://www.webforum.com/rufus/

In addition, neighbourhoods in bad shape provide a deficient quality of life, what forces people to leave the city centres. They need to have their conditions improved with proper planning, but this is a complex task because there should be taken into account environmental and economic factors, as well as the interests of both neighbours and business owners. Projects like Sureuro are working on sustainable refurbishment of the housings of such developments. For succeeding in this effort, it is necessary to regenerate neighbourhoods from the inside, involving the owners in the process, and having them participating in the decisions taken, although it may be a hard task since not always neighbours and politicians agree easily. It is also important to preserve private green parts, such as interior patios.

Further information at:

• www.ec.europa.eu/research/environment/
• FP5’s key action City of tomorrow and Cultural heritage:
  http://www.cordis.lu/eesd/ka4/home.html
• ‘Environmental Research’ website on Europa
  http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/environment/
• FP6’s Global Change and Ecosystems priority thematic area
  http://www.cordis.lu/sustdev/environment/home.html
  rtd-sustainable@cec.eu.int
• The Sixth Environment Action Programme, Environment 2010:
• Our Future, our choice
  http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/newprg/index.htm
• The Environmental Technology Action Plan
  http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/etap/index.htm
• The European Union Strategy for Sustainable Development
  http://europa.eu.int/comm/sustainable/pages/strategy_en.htm
• Towards a thematic strategy on the urban environment
  http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/urban/thematic_strategy.htm
• Thematic Strategy on Soil Protection
  http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/soil/index.htm
• Impact Assessment
  http://europa.eu.int/comm/sustainable/pages/impact_en.htm

References

1.

“EU Research for Sustainable Urban Development and Land Use ”

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