COUNTERPOINT: All Brownfields Are Not Created Equal

By Lenny Siegel

Ken Brown ably describes the challenges that brownfield revitalization poses for disadvantaged communities, and his solutions generally make sense. Taking the discussion further, I think it’s useful to divide the brownfield universe into three parts:

1. properties located in disadvantaged communities with limited potential for market-based development
2. properties located in disadvantaged communities where market forces are driving development and threatening the displacement of long-time residents and small businesses
3. properties that are not located in disadvantaged communities. These properties, which include major industrial complexes with no adjacent residential uses, are beyond the scope of this discussion

The first category includes the junkyards of East Palo Alto, California, forgotten neighborhoods such as North Hartford, Connecticut, and perhaps Philadelphia’s South Kensington. These areas need the most help, because the land itself does not have the value to encourage cleanup and reuse. Ironically, public subsidies usually go to promote major development projects in other areas that are more likely to bring financial returns to both private and public institutions.

To improve these left-out areas, funding must be targeted to community development corporations and others who cannot promise a quick return on investment. Furthermore, care must be taken to ensure that new polluting and truck-traffic-generating businesses do not simply replace the old ones.

The second category includes East Palo Alto’s “Whiskey Gulch” commercial district (where my organization had its office for several years in the 1970s), Jersey City’s waterfront, and Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties neighborhood. These are areas where private money is available because the location makes the property valuable. Government agencies may accelerate reuse through planning functions and cleanup costs are low, either because there isn’t much to clean or because the regulators allow contamination to be capped in place.

Revitalizing these areas requires programs designed to preserve neighborhood culture and inhibit displacement. Ken describes a few sensible approaches, but in those areas where market forces are strongest, some gentrification will occur no matter what. Still, from a policy point of view, its most important that government subsidies not be used to conduct development in a way that forces people out.

In some parts of the country (such as much of California), market forces — not just social needs — are encouraging housing construction on brownfields. Building housing often ensures that cleanup standards will be protective, at least in theory, and the high value of the housing means that there is money available to conduct cleanup. But care must still be taken to require that a significant fraction of the new homes be set aside for “below market” housing (or, as we say in the San Francisco Bay Area, “less unaffordable”).

All brownfields are not alike. Even brownfields in environmental justice or other disadvantaged communities vary widely. But understanding those differences, as well as the forces behind development, creates opportunities for community groups to work to ensure that cleanup and reuse benefit the people who have been living with the blight for years. BFN

Lenny Siegel is director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, California.

POINT: Race, Poverty and Redevelopment
By Ken Brown

OTHER COUNTERPOINTS

Brownfield Redevelopment Not About the Disadvantaged
By Lance Stokes

Disadvantaged Often Marginalized
By Mary Mulligan