Circular urban land-use: Bringing brownfields back in use as Urban Greenspaces (UGS) by integrating Nature-Based Solutions (NBS)

Other conference contribution, 2022

Circular Economy (CE) takes place in a loop where non-renewable resources are in circular movements within a system of production and consumption while shifting promoting resources from a bio-based origin. Soil and land can be considered a non-renewable resource due to its extremely slow formation and recovery processes as well as providing the surface for sourcing bio-based resource input in the CE systems. A ‘Circular Urban Land-use’ concept (Chowdhury, 2020, p. 9) is proposed where brownfields i.e., contaminated and potentially contaminated land, can be considered as a resource in transition from abandonment to redevelopment and reuse. Brownfields can be transformed into Urban Greenspaces (UGS) to foster a bio-based circular economy in urban areas. UGS can also be potentially combined with Nature-based solutions (NBS) to manage the contamination risk and ensure a more sustainable transition of the brownfields.  Gentle remediation methods are such NBS for low-cost, long-term methods without negative secondary impacts with potential to manage risks and improve soil ecology.  This contribution intends to present recent research outputs to assess the feasibility of UGS opportunities on brownfields across different time frames and we discuss the scope of interpreting the numerous ecosystem services provided by the UGS as bio-based products in an urban context (Chowdhury et al., 2020). Possibilities of combining GRO with UGS to support phytomanagement strategies at brownfields are also explored (Drenning et al., 2022). The contribution also intends to outline ongoing work on stakeholder engagement and development of a comprehensive work procedure for facilitating brownfield to greenspace transformation.