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OVERCOMING BROWNFIELD BARRIERS TO URBAN MANUFACTURING: COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POLICY NETWORKS AND CHANGING LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES IN FOUR U.S. CITIES
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose is to explain why and how four U.S. cities and their planners are supporting certain types of urban manufacturing in inner-city neighborhoods impacted by brownfields. Specifically, the changing relationships will be examined between local planning stakeholders that result in alternative economic development strategies encouraging new industrial development in neighborhoods distressed by industrial decline.
Description:
This study suggests that growing optimism in the U.S. manufacturing’s recovery, coupled with evolving structures and functions of social (policy) networks involving diverse groups of local stakeholders concerned with brownfields, economic development, smart growth, environmental justice and manufacturing are influencing inner-city neighborhood revitalization decisions.
Potential to Further Environmental/Human Health Protection
This project builds on prior research documenting that smart growth policies tend to overlook manufacturing’s contribution to sustainable local economic development, and reinforce non-industrial reuse of brownfields and converting remaining industrial areas to uses other than manufacturing. The presence of brownfields and their impacts in innercity neighborhoods remain a widespread phenomenon, and a number of cities are reconsidering their smart growth and brownfield redevelopment strategies. These cities are seeking to revitalize neighborhoods while simultaneously encouraging manufacturing and strengthening remaining productive industrial areas in these neighborhoods. This research will examine these issues and answer related policy questions: What is happening and why? Who is involved in changing brownfield redevelopment and neighborhood revitalization strategies? What is working, and what is not? Are there lessons and concepts for advancing sustainable local economic development planning? How can answers to these questions inform the national manufacturing policy debate?