Contaminated areas in industrialized countries are a result of industrial, mining or military activities carried out over the 20th century. Pollutants often endanger ecosystem functions and human health, thus since the 1980’s the revitalization of contaminated areas became an important concern of environmental policy in Western European countries. In Eastern European countries the awareness of this problem arose after the political changes in the 1990’s. Correspondingly, the capacities to deal with this challenge were built only recently. This paper aims to tackle the question of the possible distributive consequences of revitalizing three Eastern European brownfield areas: the site of the former Siderurgica steel plant in Hunedoara, Romania, a mixed-use area (housing and industrial) at Solec Kujawski, Poland and an oil lagoon area in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Given that these processes are in their early stages, our focus will be on the transition from the former industrial uses of the sites to their newly emerged brownfield status and on the administrative and economic conditions of their possible revitalization. This transition spans a period characterized by an intensive and largely unsystematic endeavor to reuse or redevelop the sites, resembling a patchwork of private and state initiatives with no overarching revitalization goals. However, these efforts lead to local redistributions of resources and opportunities which are likely to shape the process of future revitalization and the negotiation of decisions among actors. The main research question deals with the consequences of this early distribution of resources and of the interactions between actors on the future prospects of revitalizing the sites under the conditions of EU-funded programs and policies. The findings are of interest for understanding the variety of local conditions under which numerous other brownfield sites throughout Eastern Europe are likely to undergo processes of revitalization.
