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	September 23, 2003

BROWNFIELD DEVELOPMENT VS. URBAN SPRAWL Brownfield Development is the restoration of abandoned, underutilized and often polluted land. It's a messy business. Some of the land contains large, sprawling, poorly maintained and gutted buildings. Often the costs of dismantling the existing structures outweigh the cost of building in new, suburban 'greenfield' locations. Many brownfield sites are abandoned because it would cost more to clean them up than they would command in the market, so they're just written off and left vacant. Many are polluted, with the underlying soil contaminated by industrial development from another era, hugely expensive to remediate. Often, the sites are owned by numbered companies that are bankrupt or wound up, and subject to liens for back taxes and other unpaid debts that a new owner would have to deal with. The paradox is that, while these centrally located sites sit neglected and unused, urban sprawl consumes more and more agricultural land, parkland and green space, and brings with it traffic congestion, highway construction and pollution as cars navigate long distances past these very brownfield sites to the centres of commerce. A recent study of Toronto's brownfield sites concluded that by redeveloping them properly, Toronto could add a million people and the businesses and stores to employ and serve them, without the need to touch any of the Oak Ridges Moraine lands and the adjacent greenbelt around the city for at least a generation. And one councillor says that 40% of Buffalo's downtown area is brownfields. Ironically, a new New York State law designed to force cleanup of brownfields will actually have the opposite effect in upstate New York, since in those areas, unlike The Big Apple, the cost of cleanup exceeds the price of the raw, clean land. The answer, which would require more courage and coordination from more levels of politicians than can reasonably be expected, would be to combine such mandatory cleanup laws with a moratorium on new development in adjacent suburbs until all brownfield sites have been reclaimed. We'll have to wait for a Green Government before that will happen. 10:53:05 AM  trackback []  comment []

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