Adaptive brownfield management

Industrial sites arose all over Europe in the period of industrialisation. Partly due to employment opportunities, workers started to live nearby industry and former villages expanded into cities. Many urban industrial sites are now abandoned or underused and have become brownfields. Abandons can be caused by several aspects, e.g. movement of companies to low-wage countries, expansion of companies on the border of a city, or dynamics that forced the company to close. In the past decade awareness rose about the extensive soil consumption of our expanding cities. Land is a scarce and finite resource. (Urban) brownfields would appear to be a great opportunity for re-use and limiting soil consumption. However, regeneration of these brownfields is a complex matter for several reasons. First of all, brownfield regeneration takes place in complex networks of actors (stakeholders) which can have contradictory interests and views on the issue. Secondly, brownfield regeneration does not take place isolated from its environment. In addition, the multi-faceted character of regeneration of brownfields crosses policy domains (environment, safety, economics, spatial planning) concerned with brownfield regeneration. Partly due to this multi-faceted character various layers of government are concerned with the regeneration of brownfields and next to public actors, private and civil actors are involved too. An additional aspect that makes regeneration a complex task is the fact that the processes are lengthy and therefore bring along uncertainty. Regeneration of brownfields is addressed by actors in networks. How these actors approach the complex task of regeneration differs per actor. This research elaborates upon the question: How do parties involved in the regeneration process of brownfields deal with complexity and how does this influence the perceived governance capacity of parties in the network in terms of progress, problem solving capacity and legitimacy?