Opportunities for preparing urban contaminated land for bio-based production
Research Project, 2018 – 2021

Although the larger part of bio-based production will take place outside of cities, there are several strong arguments for including urban areas in the circular economy, not least that the advantages of bio-based production will become clear to larger parts of the population. However, pressure on urban land resources is high due to urbanisation and calls for more compact cities. If we are to foster a bio-based circular economy based on increased production of food, biomass, biofuel and other bio-based products in urban areas, retrofitting obsolete and contaminated urban brownfields becomes key. Gentle remediation methods (e.g. phytoremediation, soil amendments) are low-cost, long-term methods without negative secondary impacts with potential to manage risks and improve soil ecology. The aim of the project is to investigate the possibilities and preconditions for preparing urban brownfields for temporary and long-term urban bio-based production. The specific objectives are to: 1) investigate the opportunities in terms of land use functions as well as legal and administrative requirements linked to temporary and long-term land use of former brownfields, 2) develop a method for selecting remediation option, focusing on low-cost and low-impact risk reducing methods (human and ecosystem health) and potential for urban mining, and 3) investigate involved multi-stakeholder planning and governance processes and disentangle the driving forces that make such processes possible in practice.

 

Participants

Jenny Norrman (contact)

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Geology and Geotechnics

Marco Adelfio

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Urban Design and Planning

Shaswati Chowdhury

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Geology and Geotechnics

Jaan-Henrik Kain

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Urban Design and Planning

Yevheniya Volchko

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Geology and Geotechnics

Funding

Formas

Project ID: FR-2017/0007
Funding Chalmers participation during 2017–2019

Related Areas of Advance and Infrastructure

Sustainable development

Driving Forces

Publications

More information

Latest update

2020-12-15