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Improving knowledge about the reuse of spaces and buildings
The new ESPON Policy Brief Reuse of Spaces and Buildings shows very comprehensively what procedures, interventions and tools could be applied when considering the sustainable use of land, spaces or buildings. This topic is generally not new, but the policy brief offers the opportunity to build on good examples and share knowledge.
From my point of view, it gives complex information about factors that could influence the sustainability of land use and also instruments that could be used to ensure sustainable urbanisation. On the other hand, it also illustrates the hindering factors and challenges for redeveloping built-up areas, mainly with regard to port cities. However, these challenges are valid generally and could apply to different spaces, not only to port cities, as many different settlements face the same (re)development issues.
The comprehensive applied research project SUPER (Sustainable Urbanization and Land-use Practices in European Regions) goes into even more detail and provides useful information on different kinds of territories. As the SUPER project is producing a handbook containing recommendations, the use of this project’s findings could be very widespread. My impression is that policy-makers and other stakeholders will find important knowledge and advice in this handbook, in relation to their roles in redeveloping deprived sites in built-up areas and also in preserving greenfield sites as valuable commodities that are slowly disappearing.
What I perceive as negative aspects of current practice for enhancing the reuse of spaces are the political will, financial investment, budget and, of course, the map of landowners. Especially in Slovakia, the identification of the various landowners concerned and their anticipated cooperation are probably the biggest issues in the process of redeveloping built-up areas and areas in decline. This can probably be summarised best by the following statement from the policy brief: ‘multi-level and multi-agency governance turns out to be a key feature in the city regeneration projects’.
"My impression is that policymakers and other stakeholders will find important knowledge and advice in the SUPER handbook"
Nevertheless, emphasising cooperation on the one hand and underlining the positive aspects (environmental and economic) of the regeneration of spaces on the other hand could be the basis for further development for local policy-makers and planners. In fact, the policy brief and the SUPER project, with its valuable data, analyses and gathered interventions, could be well suited to serving this purpose.