BALANCE 4P: Balancing decisions for urban brownfield regeneration – people, planet, profit and processes

Research Project, 2013 – 2015

Land take as a result of urbanization is one of the major soil threats in Europe. One of the key measures to prevent further urban sprawl and additional land take, is redevelopment of urban brownfields: underused urban areas with, in many cases, soil and groundwater pollution. A difficulty is that the responsibilities, tools and knowledge of subsurface engineering and urban planning and design are not integrated. The overall aim of BALANCE 4P is to deliver a holistic approach that supports sustainable urban renewal through the redevelopment of contaminated land and underused sites.

In order to reach the overall aim, the specific project objectives focus on different parts of the holistic approach:
1) application and assessment of methods for design of land redevelopment strategies for brownfields that embrace the case-specific opportunities and challenges;
2) development of a method for sustainability assessment of alternative land redevelopment strategies to evaluate and compare the ecological, economic and social impacts of land use change and remedial technologies; and
3) development of a practice for redevelopment of contaminated land in rules and regulations to enable implementations.