Groundwork USA and CCLR Release “Advancing Equity in Land Reuse and Visioning”

Past Land Use Decisions Reinforce Inequalities – A New Guide Offers a Path to Community-Led Redevelopment to Foster Environmental Justice and Equity.

Non Profits The Center for Creative Land Recycling and Groundwork USA Provide Strategies, Tools and Resources for Equitable Land Reuse

BERKELEY, CALIF. July 15, 2024 – Previous zoning decisions and land use decisions, like redlining, concentrated industrial infrastructure in low-income and minority neighborhoods across the United States. As a result, many of these communities today are dotted with vacant, potentially contaminated, sites and lack essential resources like parks, green space, housing, and jobs. While these sites currently contribute to significant social, health, and economic challenges, they also have the potential to act as the foundation for reinvestment, environmental justice, and land equity.

The Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR) and Groundwork USA have released Advancing Equity in Land Reuse Planning and Visioning: A Practical Guide to Engaging and Activating Community Voices to help practitioners maximize the potential community benefit of their land revitalization projects by effectively engaging community members and centering equity in their process. The 27-page “Equity Guide” provides strategies, tools and resources to advance environmental justice and equity through the reuse of brownfields. The EPA defines a brownfield as: a property on which expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. Brownfields are concentrated in redlined and marginalized communities.

“American communities that lack the clean and safe places they deserve can benefit greatly from brownfield reuse,” said Devyn Rainwater with the Center for Creative Land Recycling, “We created Advancing Equity in Land Reuse Visioning and Planning to ensure that reuse projects achieve equity and inclusion and put community voices and needs first.”

“When we center community voice and vision in brownfield reuse the potential for community benefit increases exponentially,” shares Groundwork USA’s senior manager of environmental justice projects, Jalisa Gilmore. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach to centering equity in land use projects. The Advancing Equity guide aims to provide practitioners with a full spectrum of practical actions and best practices they can readily implement to achieve their goals.”

In order to break the cycle of land use decisions that don’t put the community first, land reuse must be community-led and include: open and honest conversations, active efforts to engage community members, and continued engagement throughout the reuse process. The Equity Guide serves as a blueprint for leaders, planners and developers to create more equitable communities with safe and clean places for people to live, work, and play. To ensure the Equity Guide itself was equitably created, the land reuse experts at Groundwork USA and CCLR employed a team of environmental justice experts to contribute to and review the guide.

Principles of Equitable Development:

• Share leadership and decision-making power: ensure residents play an equal role in making decisions that affect their communities.

• Learn and acknowledge the history of racial and social injustices: recognizing painful legacies and present realities is the first step to building trust and committing to do things differently.

• Recognize and value local knowledge: lived experience of residents will help identify community needs and center equity in your process.

• Meet people where they are at: remove barriers to engagement to ensure a representative set of community voices, especially those from marginalized communities, are heard.

• Build intentional partnerships: intentionally build diverse partnerships build on trust, respect and transparency

By following these principles, project proponents are more likely to: receive grant funding, save costs and maintain project momentum, advance multiple objectives to improve communities, build trust in the community, and be environmental justice leaders. CCLR and Groundwork USA, who champion the beneficial reuse of land to create sustainable and equitable communities, developed the guide with grant funding from the U.S. EPA.

The U.S. EPA provides grants, low-interest loans, and cost-free technical assistance to prepare brownfield sites for beneficial reuse. Closed and abandoned gas stations, factories, automotive repair shops, salvage yards, and older buildings with lead and asbestos can all benefit from these resources. Brownfields tend to be located near existing infrastructure, jobs, homes, and transportation routes. Assessing, cleaning up and reusing brownfields has dual benefits of removing potentially hazardous contamination, while creating space to address environmental injustice and improve equity.

Read the Guide: Advancing Equity in Land Reuse Planning and Visioning

Register Now: Advancing Equity in Land Reuse Planning and Visioning Workshop

Tuesday Sept. 12 10:00 a.m. PT

During this 90-minute workshop, participants will learn how to effectively use the guide and discover practical steps to embed environmental justice principles in every phase of the land reuse process.

About the Center for Creative Land Recycling

The Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR or “See Clear”) champions the beneficial reuse of underutilized and contaminated properties because people deserve clean, healthy, and safe neighborhoods to live, work and play. CCLR provides cost-free assistance to local governments, Tribes and non-profits to facilitate the reuse of brownfields. In 2023, CCLR assisted more than 300 communities and helped secure $70.3 million in grant funding for the beneficial reuse of brownfields. Learn more at https://cclr.org.

About Groundwork USA

Groundwork USA is a national environmental justice organization that supports and strengthens grassroots efforts to transform environmentally disadvantaged urban neighborhoods into healthy, green, just, and resilient communities. We work to build the capacity of communities to effect change in the natural and built environments in which they live by developing community-based partnerships that empower people, businesses, and organizations to promote environmental, economic, and social well-being. Learn more at https://groundworkusa.org.

About U.S. EPA Brownfields Program

EPA’s Brownfields Program provides grants and technical assistance to communities, states, tribes and others to assess, safely clean up and sustainably reuse contaminated properties. Learn more at https://epa.gov/brownfields