Coastal Industrialised Land Development in the UK
by Diane Awo Dumashie
Key words: Land, Coastal Zone, Project coordination and
appraisal, Regeneration.
Abstract
In the UK development of industrialised land has reached
the top of the political development and social agenda. Not least because
of the increasing pressures to find additional housing land to provide for
the emerging new social living patterns, but also because of the urgency
to ensure the need for redundant industrialised land to become a clean
environment that will sustain existing and future generations.
This presentation focuses upon coastal industrialised land
and the management process required to regenerate land to meet the
aspirations of sustainable land use. Taussik has usefully categorised ‘spoilt’
land into four definable types. These are brownfield sites, land
contaminated in situ, land degraded by activities elsewhere, and finally
land affected by natural events (J Taussik Littoral Conference 1998
p23-33). Accordingly development projects are drawn from coastal spoilt
land: a former oil refinery site, an aggregate site, and a former naval
depot.
By drawing upon the author’s direct project co
ordination experience of coastal spoilt site redevelopment as well as
ongoing cases, the aim is to illustrate the co ordination and appraisal
processes essential to a planned multi disciplinary approach. The key to
success is leadership from the top and delegated leadership to the project
coordinator. In such cases a Surveyor, acting as a project coordinator has
a valuable contribution to make. But it must be emphasised that a range of
key disciplines is needed.
The process requires an understanding of the Approach,
which deals with the contextual background such as government regulatory
control at European, national and local level. Next the Project Assembly
process that encompasses collection of baseline data with respect to the
existing historic industrialised legacy. Following this the Framework for
Action can be drawn up which above all will allocate roles and
responsibilities. Crucial to this is the pattern of landownership, whether
it is in public or private hands, and the relationship and levels of
community participation. It will be seen that this has a direct
implication upon how the process is managed.
The lessons drawn from these projects are focused upon by
reference to a hypothetical case, which illustrates the range of the
issues for analysis. The opportunities for development are interrogated
with reference to an initial market appraisal. At this stage the
environmental effects of each use are audited and the need for gap funding
identified. An initial marketing campaign should also be looked at to
ascertain budgets, time lags and strategic use of world opportunities.
Remember we are now all global players looking to global markets.
The presentation proposes a way forward based on the
technological innovations on the horizon. Such as a decision support tool
which is already being used in the process of Integrated Coastal Zone
development and management. This will seek to facilitate ever more
comprehensive ways to promote the process forward and contribute to the
appraisal methodology.
Diane A Dumashie
6f St Catherines Road
Bournemouth BH6 4AA
UK
E-mail: atfchair_p@ymail.com
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