**Author details**

Luis Loures

*Landscape Reclamation - Rising From What's Left*

**sustainable development**

ment issues [40–43], among others.

problems [16, 21, 22, 29, 46–48].

Now no longer new, the production factories of the modern era have become obsolete, forcing this generation to decide on the disposition of the last generation's industrial environment. The international industrial climate, which Pirelli [27] has termed as the third industrial revolution has rendered obsolete several industrial structures, technologies and processes of the first half of the twentieth century. Demolition and abandonment were and continue to be "*fairly common approaches to deal with facilities that were designated as 'surplus' no longer serving their original production functions*" ([28], p. 48). Unfortunately, it is still common to find older buildings, characteristic of the industrial society, simply abandoned, surviving alongside with recent development areas. Nevertheless, the creation of new and more severe environmental legislation, and the public pressure related with the need to protect the environment, increased the necessity to redevelop derelict landscapes [29], considered by many as unrealized resources for initiating urban regeneration and ecological restoration [30–32]. Often in advantageous locations near city centers, along waterfronts, supported by existing infrastructure and adjacent to residential communities, these landscapes are environmentally impaired resources that need to be returned to productive uses, and reintegrated into the surrounding community [33]. Additionally, these land transformation projects, if developed at a larger scale and across multiple sites, could contribute to restore natural processes and functions, create multifunctional landscapes and promote sustainable growth [34].

**2. Landscape reclamation: a multiplicity of activities towards** 

The complexity inherent to the majority of current landscape reclamation projects, evident in the number of different ways in which they have been characterized, both in the literature and by designers and other specialists who worked and/or analyzed them, make derelict landscape redevelopment difficult to accomplish. Apart from eminent contamination and liability on many of these landscapes [35–37], redevelopment processes have to consider also planning, real estate transaction and land use issues [38–40], plus community and economic develop-

Considering this background and current need to reclaim derelict landscapes, this book will address both planning and design issues related to derelict land transformation. In fact, as mentioned by (Commoner [44], cited by [45]), thought the main problem lies in our means of production, in order to solve our derelict land problems, we need to change not only the location of certain activities but also the ways of making things. As it has been expressed, understanding this phenomenon is perhaps one of the most relevant consequences of assessing landscape reclamation issues, given that it becomes simpler not only to comprehend the current state of the art as it applies to us, but also to envision possible solutions for present and future

As present trends of economic growth, resource consumption and environmental degradation become increasingly acknowledge as neither an acceptable nor sustainable option, discussion around why and how to redevelop derelict and or abandoned landscapes become progressively more relevant to growth management policies. As this remarkable phenomenon is gaining momentum, it becomes of utmost importance to address in one hand, the condition of these landscapes, and in the other the principles inherent to this process and the strategies and frameworks that best suit their redevelopment. For this reason, it is essential to study and understand both the differences between spaces generally typified as derelict landscapes, and the land transformation activities inherent to the redevelopment of these sites.

**6**

VALORIZA—Research Center for Endogenous Resource Valorization—Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre, Portugal

\*Address all correspondence to: lcloures@ipportalegre.pt

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
