INTEGRAted Management and Revitalisation of Contaminated SITES

Objectives of the subproject:

The Integra Sites project intends to face the industrial restructuring as a problem common to the proposing cities, but also other cities in the regions of North Rhine Westphalia, Silesia and Nord-Pas-De Calais as well as cities all over Europe by providing a strategy for targeted resource management and recycling of urban sites.

In order to establish sustainable city development, Integra sites project will help turning around the undesirable development of increasing numbers of derelict sites and sealing green sites instead. Redeveloping such sites, often called brownfield sites, is a crucial element of the European Commission’s strategy for urban sustainability. An important measure to achieve this is the persuasion of investors to select inner city brownfields instead of outer city greenfields by actively offering them suitable former industrial sites with reliable information on contamination and costs of revitalisation.

The Integra sITES project wants to facilitate this process by bringing together all stakeholders involved in revitalisation of sites such as investors, city planners, environmental departments, engineering offices and research institutes as well as banks/insurance companies in order to collect user requirements of each group.

In order to achieve this aim different steps have to be taken. Topic of investigation shall be the preference of investors for greenfields in the surroundings of the cities instead of brownfields inside the cities. Therefore a round table shall be established with people from all areas affected to collect the specific troubles and thoughts.

The next step is to find already existing support tools and concepts for the sighted problems in order to design a tool which combines all the collected ideas, solutions and tools in one hand to help potential investors make a positive decision for Brownfield-recycling.

The collected information will provide the basis for a first step towards a creation of an architecture for a decision support tool including a guideline and a software, which will provide necessary information for all stakeholders presenting all possible investment sites in a city in a user-friendly way.

An objective in the long run will be the completion of a “real-life” software developed from the architecture designed by the currently running project.

Main objective

Contributing to sustainable management in cities by fostering the regeneration of former industrial sites in cities providing a strategic guideline for cities on urban regeneration; establishing local and European stakeholder round tables on revitalisation in urban environments.

Secondary objectives

• 1. Pooling information on urban regeneration and facilitating knowledge exchange (built on information from former EU-projects)
• 2. Bringing together stakeholders of urban regeneration at a local, regional, national and European level (round tables)
• 3. Increasing awareness on revitalisation of derelict sites in European cities, carrying out three international work shops in each participating city
• 4. Providing a first draft strategy/guideline for cities on urban regeneration
• 5. Providing a feasibility study on the architecture of a decision support tool for urban regeneration
• 6. Paving the way for future collaboration towards the final preparation of a guideline and software to support strategic recycling of urban sites.

Contribution to strategic goals of RFO “Regional Triangle of Weimar”:

The project will contribute to the objective 1. It will enhance a sustainable and balanced development in the partner regions and an exchange of experience in the field of rehabilitation of brownfields.

The reclamation of contaminated sites is a subject concerning all industrial or formerly industrial cities. The rehabilitation of brownfields is necessary for a sustainable city development, because the demand of land is supplied by sealing unused land in the green belts of the cities instead of recycling the contaminated land inside the cities.

By exchanging information and experiences on how the different local authorities deal with contaminated sites in their cities and how they manage to restructure abandoned areas in order to improve the environmental status and the standard of living, the project enhances the exchange of knowledge between the three cities. It will be accomplished by means of meetings, publicity and a guideline.

The project will deepen the co-operation between the three twin cities and also between them and the private institutions involved in the project; a step towards many other possible projects in the future.

In continuation of this project a targeted strategic tool for decision support in urban regeneration shall be developed in the future based on the outputs of INTEGRA SITES project. The way for a long term cooperation in the field of revitalisation between the participating public authorities will be paved.

Contracts of collaboration have been established to foster co-operation within the “Triangle of Weimar” on national and regional level. This project contributes to establishing a “Triangle of Weimar” between the local authorities of the twin cities Cologne, Katowice and Lille Métropole.

A number of European projects have dealt with some of the issues concerning urban regeneration. These results from different fields of action should be pooled and linked now and made available to politicians and decision makers in order to foster sustainable urban development.

The project further contributes to the “Urban Thematic Strategy” COM(2004)60 for Cities currently prepared by DG Environment which focuses on sustainable city planning in urban areas. INTEGRA Sites is also in line with the EU Göteborg and Lisbon strategy of the European Union as it faces the environmental, social and economic aspects related with the regeneration of derelict land in urban areas.