Our Outputs

The BRING baseline study results illustrate that brownfield related topics still remain on a high level in European cities and the current economic and financial crisis has led to considerable problems including the growth of a new generation of brownfields from commerce, housing, infrastructure and the tourist sector. The financial crisis has fundamentally changed the environment for private and public interventments, many project developments have been stopped or delayed.

Since the 80s the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and related community initiatives have represented the main funding instrument used for the reclamation of brownfields . Despite significant financial support and numerous successful projects the brownfield stock still remains on a high level (even in western European industrial regions) and a coherent “system” approach to a European strategy in accordance with the principles of additionality and subsidiarity is still missing.

The BRING partnership agreed that the management of the land resource by the property and land markets should be regulated and accompanied by a clearly identified and transparent public policy. The common motives of the network partners are:

• The engagement in new strategies for land cycle management and the recycling of degraded and polluted areas, whether they are of an industrial, urban, commercial, military or even agricultural origin.
•  The improvement and dissemination of best practice in land management and the recycling of brownfields as an indispensable component of a strategy of economic management of the rare resource that land constitutes today.
• The contribution to the sustainable development of the European territories through the management of the water resource and the fight against global warming by the management of the land resource.

BRING proposes to partly involve 6 cities and 3 institutional partners with long term experience in upcoming brownfield problems. The common goal of the thematic network is to formulate new integrated policy approaches tocounter the effects of the current economic crisis on brownfields including the need to develop instrumentsfor anticipated land management. The urban focus will be on both redevelopment and “green” options taking into account the lack of private markets in disadvantage areas. The work program is based on the detailed analysis of brownfield problems at the European level, typologies, regional and national data on land and a common analytical approach by the A/B/C model.