Dear Alexandria,

See paper of our Colleague on RG:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267065417_Vivo_en_una_fbrica._Nuevos_modelos_de_Hbitats_

como_estrategias_de_recuperacin_de_espacios_industriales

Best Regards,

Vanessa

Chapter Vivo en una fábrica. Nuevos modelos de Hábitats como estrate...

Rezoning would likely trigger environmental assessments of the area; which in turn could result in remediation measures, if for example, you are rezoning industrial land to a residential use.

Of course issues will change with the area under consideration, once significant issue around current or past industrial areas is impacts on infrastructure corridors (which may still be used) which could come under pressure from rezonings (if there are not adequate policies in place to provide protection). E.g. freight routes may come under pressure if residential encroachment starts taking place within industrial areas, which in turn could have economic impacts (both on operator business and housing values). 

In general terms the methodologies of the urban retrofit could help you to:

- identify major treats connected to the former use

- identify physical constraints + regulatory ones

- identify the existent needs of development   (urban services, ecological services, social demand, etc).

- define scenarios of redevelopment potential

Fundamentally the issue turns on the question of the significance of the industrial heritage items if this is not correctly identified and articulated all else fails - TICCIH and ICOMOS have some guidelines on how to do this as well there is the Australian ICOMOS Burra Charter and associated documents.

In my view, often adaptive reuse has focused on the building rather than the industrial process that the building enclosed leading to a loss of heritage value. The recent TICCIH tour of industrial sites of Paris showed some examples of this approach.

This is not to say there are not significant issues in adaptive reuse the most obvious being hazardous materials - asbestos is often everywhere (lagging of boilers and piping, in switchboards, in building materials) PCB's in anything to do with electrical transformers, ash ...and the list goes on.