Integrating Sustainability into Brownfield Regeneration: Rhetoric or Reality? – An Analysis of the UK Development Industry

In the UK and elsewhere the use of the term ‘sustainable brownfield regeneration’ has resulted from the interweaving of two key policy themes, comprising ‘sustainable development’ and ‘brownfield regeneration’. This paper provides a critical overview of brownfield policy within the context of the emerging sustainable development agenda in the UK, and examines the development industry's role and attitudes towards key aspects of sustainable development and brownfield regeneration. The paper analyses results from a survey of commercial and residential developers carried out in mid‐2004, underpinned by structured interviews with eleven developers in 2004–2005, which form part of a two‐and‐half‐year EPSRC‐funded project. The results suggest that despite the increasing focus on sustainability in government policy, the development industry seems ill at ease with precisely how sustainable development can be implemented in brownfield schemes. These and other findings, relating to sustainability issues (including the impact of climate change on future brownfield development), have important ramifications for brownfield regeneration policy in the UK. In particular, the research highlights the need for better metrics and benchmarks to be developed to measure ‘sustainable brownfield regeneration’. There also needs to be greater awareness and understanding of alternative clean‐up technologies to ‘dig and dump’.