There is an operating assumption that by creating or maintaining green portions of a Brownfield property that the remaining “brown” portions of the property will increase in financial value in the final redevelopment. The traditional literature from which this conclusion is drawn is the hedonic literature associate with a direct positive relationship between property value and adjacency to open space or parks, such as the work by John Crompton (2004) at Texas A&M on The Proximate Principle . With the exception of a study by the International Economic Development Council (2000) there has not been a significant amount of work published associated with greening Brownfield properties.

The initial step in this project would be to review and summarize the primary economic literature related to property values and green or open space and to capture any secondary (i.e. grey ) literature associated with value and greening Brownfield properties. The ultimate objective would be to see if it would be possible to develop a predictive methodology to estimate the change in value associated with Green options in mixed use (including commercial, industrial, residential and open space) redevelopment designs. Such a tool could facilitate greater consideration of open space and conservation uses in Brownfield redevelopments. A survey approach of economic experts, Brownfield developers and key regulatory and Non-governmental organization contacts may also be incorporated into the project to gather data.

Finally, although there may be literature on the monetary impacts to property values there are likely limited reports documenting non-monetary values and more broadly, benefits to the community from such actions. Any predictive method to summarize change in value should attempt to capture both indirect monetary values (e.g. increased jobs, increased taxes; storm water and flood control) and non-monetized value to the community