DISCOURSES OF BROWNFIELD REGENERATION IN THE INTERNATIONAL AND THE HUNGARIAN LITERATURE

Abstract

There has been an undoubtedly growing scholarly interest towards the regeneration of former industrial areas (i.e. brownfields) in the international – predominantly ‘Western’ – geographical and urban studies literature from the mid-1990s to date. Within this vast body of knowledge, Doak and Karadimitriou identified five main discourses: the sustainability, the neoliberal, the scientific, the managerial, and the participatory discourse of brownfield regeneration. Within the confines of this paper, I attempt to position certain examples of the brownfield literature among these dominant discourses. However, since the former industrial areas of post-socialist cities are markedly different from their Western European and North American counterparts, the examples of the Western and the Hungarian literature are taken into account separately.