Abstract:Brownfield land is one of the least exploited resources for urban development in a number of Eastern European countries. Establishing a rational strategy for redeveloping brownfields is an unambiguously complex task that requires considering a number of different economic, social, physical and environmental factors. The strategic decision-making has a long term impact on the quality of life, ecological balance and urban structure. Therefore, the paper is aimed at developing a comprehensive set of criteria that contribute to the redevelopment of brownfield land in urban areas. It focuses on six main development strategies that embrace creating residential, green, commercial, recreational activity and industrial areas or leaving land as a reserve. Geographic information system (GIS) tools are employed to collect the spatial information, obtain the initial set of criteria and derive the statistical data. Expert's evaluations along with a statistical method of gauging the level of concordance of their opinion combined with Delphi method are used for determining significance of criteria within economic, social, physical (urbanistic) and environmental criteria groups. This study establishes the most significant criteria for implementing different scenarios of the brownfield land redevelopment in Vilnius, Lithuania. Developed framework will support the decision-making process in the brownfield land redevelopment aiding a sustainable urban planning.

Abstract. Urban brownfields are found in all parts of the world. They suffer from a negative image and are generally being viewed as problem areas. However, urban brownfields also offer potentials for new uses and for the ecological regeneration of cities. Strategic decision-making has a long term impact on the quality of life, ecological balance and urban structure. Therefore, the paper is aimed at providing a methodology for selecting the optimal scenario for urban brownfields regarding criteria for urban development and focuses on three possible scenarios representing sustainable urban development in the city. The results of the research are provided as a priority list for each scenario in the context of every neighbourhood of Vilnius city. The obtained results show the scenario optimal for each neighbourhood having the highest priority to implementing solutions in real life. Economic, social, physical (urbanistic) and environmental criteria are considered. Geographic information system (GIS) tools are employed for collecting spatial information, obtaining the initial set of criteria and deriving statistical data. Different MCDA methods, including TOPSIS, EDAS, COPRAS and SAW are used in the research. The correlation between the values of the sets pairs of cumulative criteria for the applied MCDA methods appeared to be satisfactory for the conducted re-search. The developed framework will support the decision-making process in brownfield land redevelopment aiding sustainable urban planning.

Abstract:Although the problem of brownfields in urban territories is successfully limited, it is a negative phenomenon of a sustainable city. Moreover, the number of recently created brownfield territories has become higher than that of the regenerated ones. Such territories reduce the quality of the social and economic setting of a city as well as visually and physically affect the life quality of city residents. Unfortunately, methods for the revitalization of brownfield land have been applied to deal with the consequences of the problem rather than to limit the problem itself. The authors of the article have investigated the aspects to be avoided to not create brownfields. The indicators that enable predicting the probability of a territory becoming a brownfield have been analyzed in this paper. Countries develop and exist under different social and economic conditions. Therefore, there is no uniform and universally accepted system of indicators for brownfield prevention that can be applied in any country or city. The authors have attempted to implement a recently developed idea of indicators for prevention under Lithuanian conditions and have selected those facilitating the identification of brownfields with an aim of identifying the most significant ones warning about the potential harm from the creation of brownfields in Lithuania. The selected indicators have been grouped, taking into account social, economic, natural, building and infrastructure settings of the city and ranked by a group of experts in urban planning. The established hierarchy of indicators in the groups of urban setting has allowed the authors to select the most significant preventive indicators for brownfields. The created OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 6707 system of indicators could be applied in practice as a basis for monitoring pertinent data and tracking their change.

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Policies of urban development are developed and come into force in form of laws, planning documents and other legal acts in many European countries. The Declarations of the Rights of the European Human right stresses up the safety and declares the necessity to foster a city, which as far as possible prevents crime, offenses and aggression. Both planners and citizens understand the impact of organization of urban environment to life quality, including safety. The problem is that the relationship between the environment and society is very complex. It is not sufficiently investigated how urban environment changes people who reside and socially interact in that territory and how it affects criminality. Public safety is one of the factors that strongly influence the quality of life. Reduction of crime rate can only be achieved if diverse factors, including characteristics of urban environment, are taken into account. The authors of the paper analysed possible impact of different urban parameters to the distribution and dynamics of crimes in open spaces. A theoretical framework of factors that can influence crimes in public spaces was developed on the basis of the classical 'crime triangle', linking likely offenders, suitable targets and guardians for the targets in time and space. The main initial hypothesis was that functionally homogeneous zones (i.e., 'purely' residential, commercial, or industrial) tend to have significantly higher crime rate than mixed use (polyfunctional) zones. The hypothesis was tested on a densely populated part of Vilnius city-12 districts with similar morphometric characteristics (density, height and fragmentation) of the built-up areas across the residential zone. The authors have been looking for the relationships between homoand heterogeneity of the land use and varying territorial crime patterns based on more than 10,000 registered criminal incidents of 2012. The investigation showed that territories with monofunctional commercial use are exposed to the highest risk of all types of crimes in the open space: murders and assaults, robberies and thefts and minor offenses. On the contrary, in the residential zones, less percentage of mixed use means lower crime rate.