Lessons from private sector Brownfield redevelopers -: Planning public support for urban regeneration

Municipal brownfield redevelopment efforts have tended to assume that the sites involved were economically noncompetitive. They have thus focused on public acquisition of contaminated property and direct incentives to specific on-site activities. The emergence of a growing number of entrepreneurial firms that redevelop brownfields-often with minimal public involvement-suggests limits to the efficacy of this approach for large and very dirty sites that continue to stand abandoned to the frustration of local planners and economic developers. New approaches to public support for such regeneration may be suggested by closer examination of the private brownfield entrepreneurs. This article reports the results of a survey of these developers, suggesting that planners can contribute to more efficient use of public economic development resources by recognizing when public intervention really contributes to, and when it may inadvertently detract from, the attractiveness of sites a community wants to see regenerated.