Brownfields Redevelopment  Toolbox

Step 1 - Community Readiness  

Step 1 - Community Readiness (sub-directory)

Brownfields Redevelopment: the Rationale

The following section has been derived from the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing Brownfields Showcase II…Opportunities in Our Own Backyard (Summer 2004). 

Brownfields redevelopment can be complex. Rehabilitating contaminated lands, or lands thought to be contaminated, requires careful risk management and municipal leadership. In addition, there are complexities not normally associated with previously undeveloped lands, including environmental assessment as well as cleanup and its associated costs. So why should a municipality bother?

 Economic Dimension
Brownfield properties are often located in strategic core areas, near water or other transportation networks. They are remnants and reminders of Ontario’s traditional manufacturing and primary resource-fed economies.
  • Whether brownfield properties once supported warehouses, steel foundries, textile mills, commercial buildings, automotive or rail repair shops, they represent lost property tax revenue and employment opportunities if left alone.
  • In Ontario, vacant properties are assessed at significantly lower rates than occupied ones. Left alone, brownfield properties reduce the local assessment base.
  • In addition, deteriorating brownfield properties can trigger a downward spiral of neighbourhoods in which they are situated. This is because surrounding residents and businesses tend to move to other neighbourhoods that are considered safer, cleaner and more economically sound. If this migration is not counterbalanced by incoming businesses or residents, municipal property tax revenues are further reduced.
  • The strain on municipal revenues is further compounded if businesses and residents move outwards from core areas to undeveloped lands, placing demand pressures on municipalities to provide needed infrastructure and services.
Did you know . . .
The cost of congestion to businesses in the Greater Toronto Area could reach $3 billion annually or 1.3 per cent of regional GDP by 2021.

Source: A Strategy for Rail-Based Transit in the GTA, Toronto Board of Trade, 2001

Environmental Dimension

Depending on what they were used for, vacant and neglected brownfield properties can present serious health and safety problems.
  • If they are contaminated, they threaten water, air and ground through actual and potential releases of untreated hazardous materials.
  • If they are not contaminated, their deteriorating buildings and surface debris still pose health and safety risks.
  • Should these properties remain undeveloped, new development will likely go to undeveloped lands. This likelihood may lead to land-use decisions that may disrupt the environment even further.
Social Dimension

Streetscapes characterized by neglected brownfield properties act as deterrents to retaining or attracting businesses and residents.  
  • When streets or neighbourhoods spiral downward, areas once lively with industrial, commercial and retail activity become desolate.
  • They function without a sense of identity or social cohesion.
  • Their physical and social connection to the larger community often fractures or breaks.
  • Businesses and residents move away, leaving behind unsafe, deteriorating lands and buildings, along with people who often have the greatest need for social and health programs, community services and housing that they can afford.
  • This is a drain on municipal resources because the relatively high demand for programs and services, coupled with low property tax revenues, create program and budgetary pressures.
Did you know . . .
Single-use, dispersed neighbourhoods, located far from downtown areas, produce nearly three times more annual greenhouse gas emissions per household than mixed-use, compact neighbourhoods near the downtown core. 

Within the same location, developing more compact neighbourhoods with mixed-use and pedestrian-oriented designs decreases greenhouse gas emissions by 24-50 per cent.

Source: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Urban Travel: Tool for Evaluating Neighbourhood Sustainability, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 2000 

Urbanization Trends


Rethinking Planning and Development Strategies: 
  • In 1871, only 20 per cent of Canadians lived in urban areas.
  • In the 1920s, the urban population began surpassing the rural population.
  • Today, about 80 per cent of Canada’s population is located in urban centres.
Ontario has a similar urbanization pattern.
  • Home to 38 per cent of Canada’s population in 2001, Ontario’s population stood at 11.9 million people.
  • By 2015, this figure is likely to rise to about 14 million people.

 Changing Development Patterns

In Ontario, the common planning method for accommodating growth has been to extend development outwards from core areas by consuming previously undeveloped lands. Ontario is not alone. This pattern of development has occurred on a worldwide scale. 

Local governments in former Czechoslovakia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Italy and the United States have all had similar experiences. And, like Ontario’s municipalities, they are recognizing the fiscal, social and environmental impacts to such resource-consuming growth patterns, including: 
  • lack of physical space for expansion
  • escalating costs of extending, operating, maintaining and replacing infrastructure and extensive transportation networks
  • loss of farm land and green space
  • continuing damage to the natural environment, including air, water and soil
Faced with these realities, Ontario municipalities are considering a broader range of planning and development alternatives.
Did you know . . .
There is a multiplier effect in brownfields redevelopment. In Canada, every dollar spent on brownfields development generates $3.80 worth of spending in related production activity.

Source: Cleaning up the Past, Building the Future: A National Brownfield Redevelopment Strategy for Canada, National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, 2003. 

Case Study: Easing Social and Economic Crisis in Sesto San Giovanni, Italy
 
About 2.5 million square metres (about 618 acres) of redundant industrial lands on the periphery of Milan are being transformed into one of the city’s most modern and promising centres of metropolitan development. In the mid-1990’s, key stakeholders, including the local government, the province, the region and unions, came together to plan for long-term economic change. To date, the results are a restored local identity, job training for the local community, new enterprises, new office space and new jobs. In fact, by 2000, 13,694 jobs were being created per year compared with 5,213 in 1994. 
 Development Alternatives

Compact community planning offers alternatives to the traditional expansionary planning model. Depending on local priorities, compact planning can include one or more of these development or redevelopment approaches:
  • Brownfields redevelopments
  • Business-Improvement Areas (BIA)
  • Civic centre
  • Commercial area
  • Downtown core or Main Street development
  • Higher, more effective density
  • Infill projects
  • Nodal
  • Town centre
  • Transit oriented
By itself, compact planning does not fulfil all the economic needs of local governments. Focusing on brownfields restoration in conjunction with other planning and development strategies can, however, contribute to stabilizing and enhancing municipal property tax revenues.


When that occurs, municipalities can choose how to accommodate the demands that arise with increasing population pressures. These demands include housing, social and cultural services and amenities, transportation, energy and communication networks, water and sewer infrastructure and commercial and retail activities.

Having choices means municipalities can be influential in developing communities on the basis of their unique strengths, needs and preferences.