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Regional Approach And Tools For Sustainable Revitalization, Documentation Of A Workshop Of The U.S.-German Bilateral Working Group, May 8 And 9, 2008 - New York, New York
Citation:
ARGUS, R., M. Bittens, K. Black, S. Bock, T. DeSantis, U. Ferber, R. Gessler, V. E. HANSEN, M. Hauschild, L. Holstenkamp, L. Llan, V. KETELLAPPER, H. Klein, D. Kooris, M. Lampert, S. McMillen, D. MacCourt, S. Martin, P. Meyer, G. Penn-Bressel, G. Riley, C. Sabedra, R. Schwarze, S. Soler, S. Thiel, A. M. VEGA, L. Wray, S. Bartke, M. Finkel, A. Rein, AND H. Rügner. Regional Approach And Tools For Sustainable Revitalization, Documentation Of A Workshop Of The U.S.-German Bilateral Working Group, May 8 And 9, 2008 - New York, New York. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-09/024, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
The overall purpose of the workshop was to share current information from Germany and the United States on key elements of research results, successful implementation, references and models, prioritization criteria, tools, processes, and approaches for determining reuse of individual sites in the context of the larger, overall region.
Description:
There is growing international recognition that revitalization of regions containing potentially contaminated sites to meet economic, environmental/ecological, and social/cultural demands can and should contribute to the sustainability of the human and natural environment by improving environmental quality and sustaining ecosystem integrity. Sustainabile regional revitalization seeks to incorporate a balance of social, economic, and environmental interests and objectives into growing and developing communities as well as shrinking cities. Achieving this balance is increasingly important in the cleanup and revitalization of regions incorporting sites with real or perceived contamination since many of these areas are not meeting their full economic, environmental/ecological, or social/cultural potential. In order to encourage regional revitalization that balances social, environmental, and economic sustainability, it is important that local communities have access to practical strategies and tools to match best practices to local conditions and achieve the right balance for the particular region. To that end, under the U.S.-German Bilateral Working Group, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) sponsored this workshop to share information and approaches developed in both countries that will lead to dissemination of strategies and tools to local communities and other revitalization practitioners to facilitate sustainable regional revitalization. The presented approaches from Germany are developed by research projects within BMBF's REFINA resarch program (http://www.refina-info.de/en/) through which also the dissemination will occur. In the U.S., this dissemination will occur through the Sustainable Management Approachs and Revitalization Tools-electronic website (www.smarte.org). This workshop was the first in a series of workshops planned for this Bilateral Working Group's focus on regional revitalization. [NOTE: This document can be perused by going to the URL. Once the URL is opened, click on Phase 4, Results, and it is under Final Report at the bottom of the page (May 8-9 workshop in NY.]
