Model of sustainable regional development with implementation of brownfield areas

Abstract

The article highlights the potential of brownfield areas in the sense of the rules and principles of sustainable development of the regions which shows significant disparities determined by the developmental tendencies of the socio-economic and environmental spheres, whose interactions were its basic platform in the Slovak Republic in the last years. Brownfield areas, with a degree of degradation and environmental quality depending on their type and original use, have a negative impact on all mentioned spheres of regional development, since such sites are unused and represent so-called brown investments, i.e. areas from which the region has no benefit. From the explicitly defined positive and negative determinants of the actual occurrence of brownfield areas in terms of sustainable development of the regions, the article quantifies their prioritization in the process of implementation into the regional development model, accepting the principles of Saaty matrix which is objective from a process perspective of sustainable regional development. Based on the explicit quantification of the above-mentioned determinants, the categorization of brownfield areas in the process of sustainable regional development, including the model of regional development with implemented brownfield sites, whose actual occurrence supports the occurrence of diversified activities, reduces the price of the surrounding land and ultimately threatens the health of the affected population and reduces the price of surrounding lands.