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Turning Brownfields into Greenspace
Bintou Njie
NASA/CASS Research Assistant
Geographic
Information Sciences Lab
Tennessee
State University
Summer 2003
What are Brownfields?
Brownfields are rural or urban industrial and commercial industrial sites that are abandoned or underused because of real or perceived contamination. Brownfields are mainly located in economically depressed communities. Many of the neighborhoods surrounding brownfields have low property values because of the eyesores.
Figure 1.
A typical brownfields site on Chicago's south side.
Now an abandoned shed, it was once
a filling station.
The Chicago Study Area
The project focuses primarily
upon the mapping and remediation of approximately 50 abandoned gasoline
stations. These stations are located in the 21 predominantly African American
Wards encompassing Chicago's Roseland community (Figure 2). The primary
objective was to develop a methodology to determine the ecological and
economic impact of the abandoned sites. A secondary objective was
to complete an impact study for use as a basis for remediation assistance
from local, state, and federal sources.
Figure 2.
Chicago's Roseland Community
Figure 3.
Abandoned Filling Stations in the Roseland Community and evirons.
Photographs of the
sites were taken during groundtruthing.
See Figures 4-7 below.
Figure 4.
Overgrown vacant lot - former filling station.
Figure 5.
Abandoned filling station.
Figure 6.
Muffler shop - former filling station.
Figure 7.
Small gravel lot - former filling station.
Using GIS Technology to Create Urban Attractions
ArcView GIS-creates maps to show off
data and enables you to solve problems by
uncovering and analyzing trends and
patterns.
Figure 8. View of abandoned filling station at Figure 5 on digital orthophoto quad (DOQ). The addresses of the former filling stations were geocoded using a shapefile of Chicago streets. The point locations of the filling stations were then used to locate the filling stations on the DOQ. Groundtruthing was conducted to verify that the locations were correct.
CITYgreen
Citygreen- is an extension of ArcView GIS software that connects scientific knowledge about urban ecology to real world local applications. The program uses engineering formulas to calculate how much work trees perform for a specific site, taking into consideration site variables. The software looks at air pollution removal, household energy conservation, storm water management, carbon storage and sequestration, and urban wildlife. These tools and the communities’ involvement are pertinent to the city ridding itself of dilapidated properties
Figure 9.
CITYgreen GIS software used to model "greening" of former filling station
sites.
Figure 10.
"Greening" model of abandoned filling station site. The areas in
green
are tree canopies. CITYgreen software
models the air pollutants removed with the
greening of the sites.