ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the interaction between industry and nature and some special aspects of the handling of post-industrial landscapes, and considers some of the other future tasks for the preservation of industrial monuments, considering the constant conflict between economy and ecology. The geology of our earth has created immense reserves of raw materials, from fossil fuels and uranium to different minerals used in metal-producing industries and for construction purposes. The Industrial Revolution was of course based on the massive exploitation of these resources. Mineral extraction and processing as well as industrial plants produce contaminant-laden exhaust and fumes, slag and ashes, heavy metal and toxic products, acids and bases or even radioactive waste. In the United States the expression brownfields to greenfields was coined later. In 1980 the US Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), creating a programme called the Superfund to address the country's legacy of hazardous materials left at abandoned industrial sites.
