ABSTRACT
Brownfields policy has emerged as a widespread and prominent mechanism of contaminated land redevelopment. This chapter situates brownfields within broader development imperatives that perpetuate racial capitalism and climate colonialism. The empirical terrain unfolds in two parts: first, brownfields policy and mapping based in a US genealogy of property tied to economic productivity; and second, US military base conversions that claim environmental benefits aligned with redevelopment projects. By basing the discussion of brownfields in US policy context, the chapter considers how brownfield projects implement specialized appraisal techniques and optimize data for capital planning in ways that facilitate land dispossession. Due to the Pentagon’s role as a major contributor to global climate change, the chapter then turns to brownfield land reuse associated with one prominent overseas and several domestic US military land reuse projects that equivocate environmental spectacle and sacrifice in racially inequitable ways. Using critical geographical analysis of racial-capitalist property and the development politics of blight, the chapter advocates for land conversion studies across the ‘Development divide’ of the Global South and Global North – from racist eco-gentrification to biodiversity development aesthetics that obscure contamination. The chapter concludes with an alternative extrapolation of brownfields as a heuristic of racial justice.
