Criteria for Sustainable Urban Development - Tool for the Development and Assessment of urban brownfields

Status

finished

Summary

Unexploited urban development zones, e.g. idle railway stations, old industrial sites and building complexes with a formerly public use (e.g. hospitals, administration) can be found in almost all towns of Austria. The re-use of these zones can become great importance for sustainable settlement development. Such "urban brownfields" are usually centrally located and have therefore high location qualities. They are already provided to a great extend with local public infrastructure and thus represent - also with regard to their size - an interesting "inner" urban expansion opportunity for public authorities as well as private investors. This "recycling" of areas of this type has to be argued positively from the ecological point of view and may represent an attractive alternative to the uncontrolled urban sprawl and the peri-urbanisation of regions close to towns: New, future oriented districts with high capabilities for the local population and/or the economy can arise from former idle urban areas.

It is, however, absolutely necessary to guarantee best urban and building-related qualities when planning and realising such urban development projects. The proposed research project therefore starts with elaborating an integrated, comprehensive criteria set considering varied qualities in the field of urban planning and building construction. This criteria set is combined with an assessment scheme in order to serve as an optimisation tool for urban planners and investors dealing in the field of re-use of urban brownfields. The criteria set including the assessment scheme is designed to be used already in the conception phase of urban development projects. It will be applied to the preparation of the master plan "Trendzone Linz Mitte" (trend zone Center Linz), which comprises re-use strategies for the area around the former cargo station of Linz.

Furthermore the criteria set and assessment scheme will serve as a basis for the tendering procedure of urban development projects. It can be used as evaluation tool for submitted proposals during the tender process and as management tool for involved companies during the planning and construction process.

In this way a high-performance tool is made available for the development of urban brownfields, beneficial for both, public authorities as well as for private investors.

Based on experiences made with the projects "solarCity" and "Eco Building" resp. "Total Quality Assessment" the project will define qualitative and quantitative criteria for sustainable urban development considering Greater Linz as example.

The criteria to be developed comprehend the following sections:

• Soil management
• Environmental protection
• Mobility and transport
• Social compatibility
• Location maintenance
• Project impact assessment and economics effects

Cooperation efforts with other cities and relevant networks in Austria are supposed to share the project's experiences with others and provide relevant actors with the achieved results.