Re: [CPEO-BIF] Re: Brownfields Digest, Vol 34, Issue 25

["Peter B Meyer" <pbmeyer@louisville.edu>]

I have a sense that we are returning to the subject of brownfield subsidy allocation logics that we were debating last year as I read Lenny's response to Joe.

As my research colleague and partner Kristen Yount put it after read Joe's comment, "Peter, he hit you in your soft spot..." --  since I DO have a soft spot for community regeneration and area-wide approaches to brownfield redevelopment. My logic in that regard is simple: you are not going to turn around and clean up hundreds of thousands of 1/4 - 1 acre sites -- the majority of brownfield sites -- by tackling them in isolation.  They are part of the community structure in which they are physically located and thus have to be addressed as part of an area-wide strategy. 

But an area strategy, which EPA's brownfields office appears to welcome, does not require, or even necessarily benefit from, a diversion of the funds needed to address contamination issues. Joe Schilling is certainly right that the brownfields program is THE lead federal regeneration effort these days, whatever the putative roles of HUD or the Economic Development Administration. We desperately need the lead that the EPA funds provide when we look at older areas that have suffered disinvestment after intensive use.

But Lenny is also completely correct in arguing that the current residents and businesses in the neighborhoods and communities that the brownfield funds are supposed to help should benefit from those resources. The funds are not used for social and environmental good if they generate displacement through gentrification, and brownfield sites' neighbors, who already have paid the price of living with the environmental threats or damage, should not have to pay again by being displaced or not benefitting from public subsidies provided to developers  to which they have contributed as taxpayers.

Granting Joe's argument over the need to regenerate areas, not isolated sites, I hope we also can agree with Lenny's prescription that, "Subsidies should be provided to entities with community benefit missions 
or, if provided to private developers, linked to community benefit packages."
 
Peter

Peter B. Meyer
Professor Emeritus of Urban Policy and Economics
Director, Center for Environmental Policy & Management
University of Louisville
WEB:  <http://cepm.louisville.edu>
- - - - -
Director of Applied Research
Center for Public Leadership and Public  Affairs
Northern Kentucky University
- - - - - - 
3205 Huntersridge Lane
Taylor Mill, KY 41015
502-45-3240 (cell)


_______________________________________________
Brownfields mailing list
Brownfields@list.cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org/mailman/listinfo/brownfields