Alternative Approach to Prioritization of Brownfield Reclamation Attending to Urban Development Potentialities: Case Study in a Depressed Industrial District in Northern Spain

Abstract

Site selection is a fundamental part of the decision-making process when attempting to reclaim derelict land and brownfield sites in any specific area. A geographic information system (GIS)-based multicriteria decision analysis was conducted to prioritize brownfield redevelopment in a depressed post-industrial district in northern Spain, following site redevelopment criteria of adequacy of the various sites to putative urban reuses, attending to physical, environmental, urban, and legal factors. Four main possible uses were defined, i.e., residential, industrial, recreational, and infrastructural, and the various factors were weighed according to their relative importance for each of these types of development. The results show that the primary factor conditioning brownfield redevelopment in the study area is the availability of urban facilities and proximity of the derelict patches to urbanized areas where the main infrastructures and services are guaranteed. They also highlight the deep impact that certain activities such as mining and uncontrolled chemical waste discharges may cause on the areas affected by them, which might be irreversibly condemned to abandonment due to the high costs and technical difficulties involved in restoring them. Thus, site location with respect to urban facilities and previous activities seem to be the two main factors conditioning the suitability of brownfields for redevelopment in the study area.