Our vision is to turn brownfields into competitive areas for new use and development.
A brownfield is a property (land, building, complex) that is underused, neglected and potentially contaminated. Such a site arises as a remnant of industrial, agricultural, residential, military or other activity and cannot be effectively used without undergoing a process of regeneration.
The primary objective of the National Brownfield Regeneration Strategy (NBRS) is to ensure a coordinated approach to brownfield regeneration through government policies, financial programmes and appropriate conditions that will make it possible to find new economic or publicly beneficial uses for brownfields. Revitalised brownfields will become beneficial to the economic use of built-up areas and the development of municipalities.
The strategy is submitted in an updated version every five years for approval by the Government of the Czech Republic. The currently valid version is NBRS 2024, which was approved on 8 July 2019. The main priority of the strategy is institutional provision of support for regeneration. The Ministry of Industry and Trade is responsible for its coordination and implementation. CzechInvest is the leader in the area of brownfield regeneration at the central level. Through its activities, the agency is directly involved in the formulation and implementation of the NBRS.
Other departments involved in the NBRS include the Ministry for Regional Development, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of the Environment.
When regenerating a brownfield, the investor has to overcome a number of obstacles including remediation of ecological burdens, settlement of property relations on the given site and amendment of the land-use plan. Use our infographics to familiarise yourself with the individual stages of brownfield regeneration and the documents that will have to be prepared in each phase!
The first step is to formulate a vision and answer the question of what new functions the regenerated brownfield should fulfil. This sets the course for the project, which will inevitably include analyses, surveys and feasibility studies.
The preparation and implementation of a development project on a brownfield site requires time, financial resources and the involvement of a team of experts who can handle the areas of architecture, urban planning, construction, law, financing and many other disciplines.
Due to its industrial past, the central planning of the former Communist regime and the historical displacement of the population from the Sudetenland, Czechia has a relatively large number of abandoned and neglected sites that have been degraded by human activity.
The Czech economy was transformed into a market economy in the 1990s. This change brought with it a wave of privatisations of large, state-owned enterprises, which resulted in a sharp increase in the number of abandoned industrial and agricultural complexes, production facilities, warehouses and other properties.
Over the years, the abandoned properties fell into a state of disrepair and thus became a major problem for the sustainable development of cities and towns. Because the costs of revitalising such sites is very high in the majority of cases, they often exceed the financial possibilities of the properties’ owners and the sites thus continue to deteriorate and burden the areas in which they are located.
The first extensive project that opened up the issue of brownfields at the level of public institutions in Czechia was the Brownfield Regeneration Strategy, which received financing from the PHARE programme. In 2003 and 2004, a strategy was formulated for CzechInvest by a consortium of international and Czech consulting firms and the project attempted to transfer the experience of Great Britain in particular to the environment of Czechia. However, this proved to be very problematic due to underestimation of the role of local authorities, the difference between the Czech and British legal frameworks and insufficient mapping of the local environment.
Therefore, a Search Study for Locating Brownfields was subsequently commissioned. The study was conducted in 2005-2007, resulting in the mapping of a 2,355 sites. Based on this data and the project described above, the National Brownfields Database (NBD) was subsequently created. CzechInvest has administrated the NBD since its inception. The National Brownfield Regeneration Strategy, which is within the purview of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, was also created on the basis of data from the NBD. This strategy is submitted in its updated version to the government for approval every five years.
When regenerating a brownfield, the investor has to overcome a number of obstacles including remediation of ecological burdens, settlement of property relations on the given site and amendment of the land-use plan. Use our infographics to familiarise yourself with the individual stages of brownfield regeneration and the documents that will have to be prepared in each phase!
