Urbanization and the Geoenvironment - Sustainable Practices in Geoenvironmental Engineering - page 244

Organizational focus and
structure

Community profiling and
community planning

Site identification and
characterization

Sustainable brownfields
redevelopment

Site marketing and
redevelopment

Environmental justice

Project funding and
finance

Technology applications

Legal/regulatory issues Risk management and restoration

FIGURE 7.11
Elements to be incorporated into a sustainable brownields redevelopment. (Adapted from USEPA, A Sustainable
Brownields Model Framework , U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ofice of Solid Waste and Emergency
Response, Washington, DC, EPA, EPA500-R-99-001, January 1999.)

may be found that was not initially discovered. Long-term monitoring, particularly for
natural attenuation, may be required. The site can only be developed when the regulatory
levels have been achieved.
The USEPA (1999a) organized various elements into a model framework (illustrated in
Figure 7.11). Many of the principles of sustainability are incorporated into this process
to enable the project to be sustainable for the community in the future. The framework
is designed to assist municipalities, planners, and developers to undertake brownields
projects. The technologies used should incorporate resource conservation, materials reuse,
public safety and mobility, and information availability. Factors to measure sustainability
should be incorporated in the future and projects should be reevaluated every few years
to monitor progress and failures.

7.4.7 Sustainability Indicators for Urbanization

Indicators are useful for determining progress and comparisons with other cities or prac-
tices. There has been considerable effort in recent years to create indicators as a measure
of the sustainability of cities. Most of the indicators presently available deal with easy-to-
obtain data such as recycling information. Cities such as Seattle (Portney, 2003) use a wide
range of indicators such as air quality, biodiversity, energy, climate change, ozone deple-
tion, food and agriculture, hazardous materials, human health, parks and open space, eco-
nomic development, environmental justice, education, etc. (Figure 7.12). An example of an