On 29 November 2017, we held the 3rd and last Baltic Urban Lab workshop titled "Sustainable brownfield regeneration in Nordic and Baltic cities - Transforming contaminated land into urban districts and living areas" as one of the parallel sessions of the Nordregio Forum 2017. A high demand for redeveloping brownfield areas, such as harbours and industrial sites, to make European cities grow in a more sustainable manner exists. During the workshop, we explored the process by which contaminated brownfields can be transformed into sustainable urban neighbourhoods by taking into account: integration of land-use planning and soil remediation for cost efficiency, temporary use and citizen participation.
Emma Tytgadt, REFILL Project Leader (City of Ghent, Belgium) and Josefien Matthys, Neighbourhood Manager (City of Ghent) elaborated on "Capturing long lasting effects on Temporary use". Since the city of Ghent is the leading partner of the REFILL project, a European exchange network that is interacting on temporary use, we had two presenters from Belgium. Through the story of two best practices - De Site and KERK (two brownfields converted into a lively temporary meeting place - waiting for a new development) we focused on the question - how do we capture long-term dynamics of temporary use in your city? De Site used to be an old industrial waste platform whereas KERK was originally a factory that was converted into a place to hang out, party and to experiment. The two examples provided a great source of inspiration - from having a neighbourhood manager to giving municipal support to young innovators who implemented their ideas of temporary use. They concluded their presentations with some wise words - "Temporary use as a bridge to a new development".
Jarno Laitinen, Project Manager (Centre for Economic Development-, Transport and the Environment, Finland) presented a topic of "Finding ways to implement sustainability in remediation through procurement - Case Finnish Contaminated Land Demonstration Program". The purpose of the Demonstration Program is to operate as an innovation platform for contaminated land risk management and remediation. The aims are to facilitate a stakeholder driven process for sustainable remediation design, develop and disperse know-how on managing complex brownfield sites throughout the stakeholders, showcase opportunities and benefits of the state-of-the-art in situ remediation methods and enchance the national remediation market dynamics for futures benefit. Altogether five municipalities were involved in the Program where the "orphan" brownfield sites have been located for piloting. As part of the process, pre-qualification criteria (including financial capabilities, operational capabilities and technical capabilities) was created for the tenders with the overall purpose of decreasing the amount and select the most suitable tenders for continuing the procurement process with.
On the next stage, three best qualified tenders were invited to continue to the procurement dialogue phase. The procurement dialogues as such included two rounds of procurement dialogue, arranged as 1-to-1 meetings and they resulted in outcomes such as technical feasibilty and commercial availability of the solutions, environmental and social feasibility, final RfT and contract terms. Selection for sustainable remediation strategy and technologies was conducted by sustainability appraisals during the dialogues with a step-wise, semi-quantitative approach used for sustainability evaluation. The final tenders were later based on operations management, project plan and design and most importantly, on life-cycle costs in order to find the most economically feasible solution for soil remediation.
Parallel to the procurement process, an informal collaborative regulatory group was formed to facilitate the notification process for the pilot projects. Notifications for contaminated land remediation were prepared based on the dialogue in the regulatory group and thus, kept the procurement process on track.
Tone Berge, Architect MNAL, Kaleidoscope Nordic AS (Norway)'s topic was "Transformation and participatory design" - she addressed the issue of how to develop a new identity in coherence with the existing when transforming an area. How can this be achieved through a participatory design process? A masterplan was created by Kaleidoscope Nordic AS for Dikemark, an abandoned hospital area in Asker, neighbouring municipality to Oslo. Proposal is based on a study of the historical building site which directed the design processes.
Dikemark is located 45 minutes from Oslo, it is a cultural heritage site of 11 hectares, including a psychiatric hospital and other accompanying buildings that have repeating design features. Overall 1200 new housing units have been planned for the area. The planning process started with the Europan12 prize in 2013 and in 2014 Dikemark was added into Asker's municipal plan for 2014-2026. In 2016, the co-creation processes started with different methods used for engaging the local community: map survey, interactive exhibition, media discussion and debate, workshop for concertization of ideas.
Some examples: lunch event was held in open air, with free mic which facilitated ideation and engaged the public. The challenges faced were: time, complexity of the process, plurality of interests/motives, influence.
The presentation concluded with the notion that co-creation is a goal in itself and that together we are more. We should include the people at an early stage, engage them in a dialogue in order to reach out to many for better and more fruitful results for brownfield regeneration projects.
Nordregio Forum 2017 took place in the city of Oslo, Norway, during 29-30 November. The overarching theme of the forum was "Nordic Cities - Connecting the Urban and the Rural" and the event itself took place in a regenerated brownfield area called Vulkan which nowadays boasts with restaurants, hotel, conference venue and of course, residental apartments. The Forum included many keynote speakers from Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation which brought a nice vibe to the forum. "Local knowledge is the cornerstone to all development" was stated by the Norway's State secretary Paul Chaffey when opening the Forum. And understanding our own local communities is what actually drives the development and it is one of the key elements of integrated urban planning approach for brownfields that we are testing in Baltic Urban Lab.
Find out more:
REFILL project
www.cleansoil.fi
Kaleidoscope Nordic AS
Nordregio Forum 2017
Presentations from the 3rd workshop
