The typical showcase of urban transformation practice can be experienced mostly in the core or close proximity of downtowns as either replacing a series of existing vacant or deserted lots along with exacerbated natural system or retrofitting built-up areas and housing affordability. In this way, regardless of their size but their linkage with nearby land uses and down to the urban core, brownfields necessitate urban regeneration practice whereas charging the city with discriminatory land use policies as well as a multitude of social and ecological problems. Urban brownfields consisting of natural assets -including river, wetlands, delta etc.-, post-industrial facilities and districts, dysfunctional settlement patterns and slums, and leftover areas make up of depressed, yet significant regions of urban fabric. Having traces of very natural and cultural threads of urban communities, these specific places as a basic ‘urban regenerator’ are capable of revising physical and social aspects of downtowns or urban core areas.
The basic argument raised in the paper engages urban brownfield(s) within fast growing metropolitan cities across the globe into urban regeneration policy through hands-on experience of green infrastructure concept. Based on this fact, this paper aims at;
- introducing green infrastructure-based design and management approach that claims to mitigate present and likely effects of social and ecological problems particularly on both urban fabric and the brownfield itself while recognizing the importance of urban (brownfield) regeneration policy,
- studying the theme in the case of a strategically significant and centrally located brownfield of İzmir coastal metropolitan city that embraces post-industrial sites, slums and abandoned lots along with delta and hydrological system. This brownfield and its urban-wide ecological, social and historical traces have nowadays been a central concern of urban regeneration in İzmir
