Learning from practice: Using case-study research towards post-industrial landscape redevelopment theory

Abstract

In a period when the environmental situation, despite all the well-being indications, is of concern, the increasing urbanization coupled with global issues of climate change, lack of water, environmental degradation and social segregation demands a deeper look at spatial planning and landscape redevelopment. In this scenario, driving the sustainable urban development agenda is a shared concern for the future of the planet. However, while the need to change is generally accepted, sustainability continues to be hard to define and still more difficult to apply. As it has been widely discussed, the effects of the globalization of industry over the past decades had a profound effect on former industrial areas all over the world, producing a vast array of obsolete industrial facilities and the various impacts which are generated from them. For this reason, the recognition that the reutilization of derelict landscapes, within urban settlements of all sizes, constitutes a proactive strategy to struggle both the continuous urban growth and the loss of public and private open space, promoting the development of more human, safe, attractive and competitive cities constitutes an important step towards landscape sustainability. This paper presents a methodology towards the definition of an improved post-industrial landscape redevelopment theory based on the case study research method. The proposed approach and the way it is applied in this paper may be empirically described as research that analyses successful post-industrial landscape redevelopment design approaches, in order to build a set of design principles that might inform and serve as a theoretical basis to the redevelopment of similar landscapes. © 2011 WIT Press.