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We employ a mail survey of private developers that uses conjoint choice experiments and Likert-scaled attitudinal questions to examine preferences for policy instruments and incentives intended to encourage brownfield cleanup and redevelopment. Our analysis suggests that developers judge public hearing requirements at brownfield redevelopments unattractive, but that they place a relatively high value on liability relief--from both cleanup costs and claims by third parties. Reimbursement of environmental assessment costs is not particularly attractive. We also find considerable heterogeneity among developers in the value they place on these incentives, depending on their experience with contaminated sites.

Climate projections in many U.S. metropolitan areas show increases in daily temperature, and potential shifts in rainfall patterns toward stronger, more intense storms. At the same time, metropolitan regions continuing to experience population growth face the prospect of areal expansion and higher land-use intensities. The possible coupling of such developmental changes and more frequent intense precipitation events poses a litany of well-known challenges to storm-water management. This paper reports survey research that examines the experiences and expectations of engineers, planners, and other agency staff in storm-water management in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan region in the context of climate change. We find that staff from jurisdictions with a high degree of development and strong population growth, and those with more work experience, engagement with climate issues in their work, and greater belief that scientists understand climate change, exhibit a higher level of concern with the potential threat of climate change on storm water runoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the existing literature on the beneficial effects of reusing brownfields to promote urban regeneration and renewal in North America. Studies included in the review represent a range of scales from the national to the local level and cover several methodological approaches. In addition to discussing shortcomings in this literature in differentiating economic benefits and impacts and measuring social welfare changes for guiding public policy, it suggests directions for improving the estimation of beneficial effects. These include the adoption of a wider variety of metrics, increased emphasis on the distribution of these effects, and a more transparent, broader area accounting perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes how future land use assumptions are incorporated into the United States Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 or Superfund cleanup decisions. Background on the Superfund program; Stages of the remedial process; Consequences of tailoring the remedial process to land use.