Sustainable Regeneration of Former Military Sites

All over the UK, driven by recession, defence cuts and Treasury expectations, property dedicated to national defence – sometimes for centuries - is being sold off and redeveloped for new land uses. As defence services shrink, the MOD combines formerly separate facilities for training, catering and depots onto core, tri-service sites, releasing sometimes complex, contaminated, inaccessible, heritage laden and contested areas for reuse. This transition process has accelerated over the last twenty years. It affects nationally symbolic buildings and thousands of other sites. Theirredevelopment is a complex planning challenge, differing from ordinary changes of usebecauseof the unusually wide range of interested stakeholders and their expectations. There is very little information about what happens after bases close. This omission is significant: planning and redevelopment agencies, and communities,are unable to draw on similar communities' experiences or take national trends into account because no systematic information or established prototype exists for what works. Communities are left experimenting with untested land use configurations, partnership structures, and implementation and financing strategies. This book will draw on information from case studies including national and international examples of military base redevelopment to take an important step towards making informed redevelopment policy that likely influences economic, environmental, and social decision-making.