Interesting concept: Redfields to Greenfields. Could your institution find some value in turning formerly densely-populated urban areas into green spaces?

In the language of urbanism, “greenfields” usually means rural land at the metropolitan edge, where suburbia metastasizes. “Brownfields” are former industrial sites that could be redeveloped once they are cleaned of pollution. “Greyfields” — picture vast empty parking lots — refer to moribund shopping centers.

Recently another such locution was coined: “redfields,” as in red ink, for underperforming, underwater and foreclosed commercial real estate. Redfields describe a financial condition, not a development type. So brownfields and greyfields are often redfields, as are other distressed, outmoded or undesirable built places: failed office and apartment complexes, vacant retail strips and big-box stores, newly platted subdivisions that died aborning in the crash.

Now comes “Redfields to Greenfields,” a promising initiative aimed at reducing the huge supply of stricken commercial properties while simultaneously revitalizing the areas around them.

What resources are available for designing open spaces? How is it possible to exchange descriptions and concepts dealing with this? How can social and perceptual aspects be included and how can they be taken into account by the design process? What part is played by conditions deriving from nature? And what is more: how are locations and spaces created in the open air, how are paths routed and boundaries set, how are hard and soft materials used? This book identifies and analyses the elements that come together to create landscape architecture. The authors draw on their practical and theoretical experience to reveal the central components of design and the intellectual paths followed in the design process.