Regeneration of Post-Agricultural Brownfield for Social Care Needs in Rural Community: Is There Any Transferable Experience?

In the 21st century, rural communities face many challenges, including implications of dynamic population aging, a lack of social care services, and the occurrence of abandoned post-agricultural brownfields. This paper is methodologically based on the findings derived from a set of qualitative in-depth interviews with the key rural stakeholders, explores the decisive factors and limits, accelerators, and barriers governing successful regeneration of the post-agricultural brownfield in the post-socialist environment. We are using the case of the regeneration project of a large-scale former communist agricultural cooperative, located in Vranovice, the Czech Republic, to illuminate how complex and challenging the redevelopment of a post-agricultural brownfield into a social care facility for elderly people is. A wide agreement among the experts in the field of community development exists that this regeneration project can serve as a model example for other rural municipalities that are sharing similar local development issues. Our findings illustrate how important and challenging at the same time are the matters of good governance, the active and long-term participation of stakeholders in the regeneration project, and the real-life introduction of the public-private partnership concept, particularly in immensely transforming the post-socialist countryside.

Points of attention in designing tools for regional brownfield prioritization.

The regeneration of brownfields has been increasingly recognized as a key instrument in sustainable land management, since free developable land (or so called "greenfields") has become a scare and more expensive resource, especially in densely populated areas. However, the complexity of these sites requires considerable efforts to successfully complete their revitalization projects, thus requiring the development and application of appropriate tools to support decision makers in the selection of promising sites where efficiently allocate the limited financial resources. The design of effective prioritization tools is a complex process, which requires the analysis and consideration of critical points of attention (PoAs) which has been identified considering the state of the art in literature, and lessons learned from previous developments of regional brownfield (BF) prioritization processes, frameworks and tools. Accordingly, we identified 5 PoAs, namely 1) Assessing end user needs and orientation discussions, 2) Availability and quality of the data needed for the BF prioritization tool, 3) Communication and stakeholder engagement 4) Drivers of regeneration success, and 5) Financing and application costs. To deepen and collate the most recent knowledge on the topics from scientists and practitioners, we organized a focus group discussion within a special session at the AquaConSoil (ACS) conference 2017, where participants were asked to add their experience and thoughts to the discussion in order to identify the most significant and urgent points of attention in BF prioritization tool design. The result of this assessment is a comprehensive table (Table 2), which can support problem owners, investors, service providers, regulators, public and private land managers, decision makers etc. in the identification of the main aspects (sub-topics) to be considered and their relative influences and in the comprehension of the general patterns and challenges to be faced when dealing with the development of BF prioritization tools.

Targeted selection of brownfields from portfolios for sustainable regeneration: User experiences from five cases testing the Timbre Brownfield Prioritization Tool.

Prioritizing brownfields for redevelopment in real estate portfolios can contribute to more sustainable regeneration and land management. Owners of large real estate and brownfield portfolios are challenged to allocate their limited resources to the development of the most critical or promising sites, in terms of time and cost efficiency. Authorities worried about the negative impacts of brownfields - in particular in the case of potential contamination - on the environment and society also need to prioritize their resources to those brownfields that most urgently deserve attention and intervention. Yet, numerous factors have to be considered for prioritizing actions, in particular when adhering to sustainability principles. Several multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approaches and tools have been suggested in order to support these actors in managing their brownfield portfolios. Based on lessons learned from the literature on success factors, sustainability assessment and MCDA approaches, researchers from a recent EU project have developed the web-based Timbre Brownfield Prioritization Tool (TBPT). It facilitates assessment and prioritization of a portfolio of sites on the basis of the probability of successful and sustainable regeneration or according to individually specified objectives. This paper introduces the challenges of brownfield portfolio management in general and reports about the application of the TBPT in five cases: practical test-uses by two large institutional land owners from Germany, a local and a regional administrative body from the Czech Republic, and an expert from a national environmental authority from Romania. Based on literature requirements for sustainability assessment tools and on the end-users' feedbacks from the practical tests, we discuss the TBPT's strengths and weaknesses in order to inform and give recommendations for future development of prioritization tools.

Timbre Brownfield Prioritization Tool to support effective brownfield regeneration.

In the last decade, the regeneration of derelict or underused sites, fully or partly located in urban areas (or so called "brownfields"), has become more common, since free developable land (or so called "greenfields") has more and more become a scare and, hence, more expensive resource, especially in densely populated areas. Although the regeneration of brownfield sites can offer development potentials, the complexity of these sites requires considerable efforts to successfully complete their revitalization projects and the proper selection of promising sites is a pre-requisite to efficiently allocate the limited financial resources. The identification and analysis of success factors for brownfield sites regeneration can support investors and decision makers in selecting those sites which are the most advantageous for successful regeneration. The objective of this paper is to present the Timbre Brownfield Prioritization Tool (TBPT), developed as a web-based solution to assist stakeholders responsible for wider territories or clusters of brownfield sites (portfolios) to identify which brownfield sites should be preferably considered for redevelopment or further investigation. The prioritization approach is based on a set of success factors properly identified through a systematic stakeholder engagement procedure. Within the TBPT these success factors are integrated by means of a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodology, which includes stakeholders' requalification objectives and perspectives related to the brownfield regeneration process and takes into account the three pillars of sustainability (economic, social and environmental dimensions). The tool has been applied to the South Moravia case study (Czech Republic), considering two different requalification objectives identified by local stakeholders, namely the selection of suitable locations for the development of a shopping centre and a solar power plant, respectively. The application of the TBPT to the case study showed that it is flexible and easy to adapt to different local contexts, allowing the assessors to introduce locally relevant parameters identified according to their expertise and considering the availability of local data.

Population decline in Polish and Czech cities during post-socialism? Looking behind the official statistics.

The evolving debate on "urban shrinkage" mirrors an increasing interest in demographic phenomena on the part of urban scholars. This paper discusses ambiguous evidence about recent population decline in the large cities of Poland and the Czech Republic, with a particular focus on Lódz and Brno in general and their inner cities more specifically. By applying a mixed-method approach, the paper identifies indications of inner-city repopulation and socio-demographic diversification which are not yet apparent in register or census data. It is argued that there are indications of a silent transformation of traditional residential patterns and neighbourhoods in east central Europe. In the inner cities, this is reflected, amongst other things, by the presence of new households that may be called "transitory urbanites".