Sustainable Brownfield Regeneration - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 1101

remain in turmoil, interest rates are at an historic low and the development industry
going through one of its deepest troughs.
Such change creates Brownfields as car factories shut down, shops close and
leisure facilities fail due to lack of visitors. (Former) giants such as AIG, General
Motors and the Royal Bank of Scotland are in public ownership. High street names
such as Woolworths have failed resulting in many vacant city centre stores.
The space for manoeuvre in the CABERNET land use puzzle has perhaps more
flexibility than it truly needs and we would like it to have. After all the pieces of the
puzzle need each other to avoid falling out. A system needs its component parts to
continue to function.
Some argue that peak oil and climate change are tipping points which will
result in a paradigm shift in the way urban societies manage themselves and their
relationship with the rest of the planet. The Transition concept represents one
bottom-up approach to ensuring local urban communities have the social and intel-
lectual capital to survive energy descent. Brownfields are an essential local resource
that such initiatives will have to plan to exploit wisely if they are to succeed by
surviving.
One final thought is that US and potentially international approaches to con-
taminated site management arose from the response to the federal emergency that
developing the former Love Canal gave rise to (Box 25.3 ).
Box 25.3 Failed Vision Creates Brownfields
William Love's vision of a Direct Current (DC) powered utopia on the shores
of lakes Erie and Ontario failed. The advent of Alternating Current (AC)
technology killed off the competing DC technology: Love' utopian dream
ended and the part filled canal intended to carry water through the turbines was
abandoned. Eventually the Hooker Chemical company bought this uncontam-
inated Brownfield site and disposed of its industrial wastes in it. Post World
War II, a growing population meant the local Board of Education wanted
more land for schools and housing: they bought land from Hooker and, ignor-
ing institutional controls prohibiting development, built homes and a school
on Love's waste infilled canal. This closure of the contaminated-pathway-
receptor linkage came to national attention in the 1970s and resulted in the
US Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability
Act (CERCLA) - more commonly know as the Superfund. Today Love Canal
is synonymous with contaminated site management but it started out as an
uncontaminated site that met the CABERNET definition of Brownfield well
before it became a chemical waste repository.