Sustainable Brownfield Regeneration: Redrawing the Boundaries of Expertise

In order to enhance the ‘sustainability’ of brownfield urban regeneration it is increasingly argued that there needs to be a wholesale re-drawing of the boundaries of expertise. The original objectives of the sustainable development discourses included the idea that powers and responsibilities should be devolved away from professionals, bureaucrats, engineers, and scientists and given to empowered ‘lay’ communities. In turn this delegation of responsibilities would require communities to develop their own understandings of how social and technical processes operate in order for their inclusion to be effective. They should be able to identify particular problems and play a central role in developing practical, and workable solutions. This shift in thinking reflects wider trends within the social sciences and public policy spheres more broadly in which there has been a greater questioning of traditional models of expertise. Some writers talk of a new era of post-modernism where ‘certainties’ and faith in science and technology have given way to a new era of uncertainty and the celebration of multiple truths and forms of knowledge.