Today’s topic is one that is very important in the world of economic development and urban planning, but not well understood outside of those realms. When I worked for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) in Indianapolis last year, one of our primary concerns as a community development organization was the the decline of the urban core of the city. The heart of downtown remains flush with business headquarters, government buildings, sports complexes and tourist destinations, but the areas immediately surrounding this central district have been in various states of decline for awhile. Indianapolis is like other Midwestern cities in that the many of its properties that used to be the focal points of manufacturing and business prosperity lie as vacant eyesores in areas adjacent to the downtown area. While population migration is perhaps the biggest cause of today’s vacancies, brownfield properties are both a driver of that population migration and an obstacle to economic prosperity for the residents who remain.
What are Brownfields?
Perhaps brownfield properties are little-known because they’re largely invisible. A brownfield, by the EPA’s definition, is any property for which expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. These properties could be former industrial facilities, laundromats, car dealerships, or many other things, and chances are that you’ve passed quite a few without even knowing it. In fact, according to Government Accountability Office estimates, there is one brownfield for approximately every 745 people in the United States:
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that there are as many as 425,000 Brownfields throughout the U.S. Some estimates show that there are 5 million acres of abandoned industrial sites in our nation’s cities – roughly the same amount of land occupied by 60 of our largest cities. Some estimate that as much as $2 trillion of real estate is undervalued due to the presence of contamination.
To put this statistic in perspective, the number of fast food restaurants in the United States is estimated at between 264,000 and 232,000, depending on who you ask. So there are nearly twice as many brownfields in the United States as fast food locations. Just imagine if each time you passed by a fast food restaurant it was accompanied by two old rotting industrial facilities or weed-filled parking lots with a few rusted out cars in the back. Continue reading →