Talk:Brownfield land

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I don't believe that a "brownfield" is necessarily contaminated by hazardous waste or pollution - unless you assume a broad definition of "pollution" that would include noise pollution, "crime pollution", or poor transportation connectivity.

Granted, most sites qualifying for an EPA grant are probably polluted in the narrower sense. But even the EPA grants allow for qualification based a perceived "potential" contamination.

I believe that, in a "New Urbanist" sense, the term "brownfield" could be applied to almost any underutilized tract of land that is largely undervalued, underutalized, and expected to remain underutalized under current development patterns. New Urbanism seeks to locate transportation, housing, work and shopping within these areas. --AHands

Can someone please clarify if "brownfield" applies only to sites officially designated as such by a government, or applies to any seriously contaminated site? --Ryguasu

Different policy in the UK: brownfields are given priority for building on (after being cleaned); to slow the consumption of greenfield sites. -- Tarquin

My understanding, at least for the (informal) definition of the word is that a brownfield isn't necessarily contaminated, but isn't merely land that has previously been built upon - it means land that has been built upon, but has fallen into dereliction. So an old warehouse redevelopment would be brownfield development, but knocking down (hitherto) occupied houses to build a shopping mall wouldn't be brownfield (I think that would just be "redevelopment"). I'm inclined to update the article, but I'm unsure as to whether this is entirely accurate even for Britain, nevermind other countries. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:19, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Brownfield sites (for UK planning purposes) are any sites which have previous mand-made structures or usage made of them (ie roads count). 'Redevelopment' of a site is a specific example of 'brownfield'. Effectively, 'brownfield' is, for all practical purposes, anything that isn't 'greenfield'! --VampWillow 18:03, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Brownfield sites can be high in biodiversity due to a combination of factors: early successional habitats, bare ground for insect basking, lack of disturbance, unusual substrates etc. Valuable wildlife sites may be threatened by current government planning policy in the UK, which stipulates brownfield sites are a priority for redevelopment. Greenfield, by contrast, is often low biodiversity farmland, whose biodiversity is low and generalist due to intensive agricultural inputs. Bethan Stagg, University of Leeds.