Multifunctional clusters in Post-industrial Landscapes: rising from what's left

Development in the post-industrial landscape is one of many contexts that designer's will be forced to participate in as contributors to a sustainable future. The rapid expansion and globalization of industry over the past century has had a profound impact on industrial areas all over the world. A changing global economic and energy paradigm from industry to technology has and will continue to produce a vast landscape of obsolete industrial facilities. These facilities and their surrounding service industries are often strategically located near waterways, cities, and great centers of population, while simultaneously being segmented from the very people and communities that support their existence. The question then, for today's designer, is how to plan for the future of these post-industrial landscapes facing the new growth management paradigm. The re-use of post- industrial sites in order to develop multifunctional landscapes, as opposed to the consumption of previously undeveloped land is seen as a great possibility to the achievement of the new growth management paradigm - the accomodation of economic development and population growth while sustaining the spirit of community and the physical environment. To demonstrate the relevance of the reclamation of these sites, and a design approach that considers environmental, social, and economic aspects, this paper presents and analyzes two post- industrial reclamation studies. One located in Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America, (West 3rd Street Peninsula) and the other in Lagoa, Portugal (left margin to the Arade River), both presenting a vast potential for redevelopment. The main objective of this article is to show the post-industrial landscape as a complex resource, which can be recovered, re-used, and reintegrated into the surrounding community as a multifunctional landscape; a diverse environment that provides economic, social, and environmental benefits for the community and the land- investigating the benefits that may arise from the reclamation of urban post- industrial environments using a multifunctional cluster approach -. Additionally, the theory of the overall design strategy is discussed in detail in a manner such that it can be used as a resource for other designer's for non site-specific challenges. K eywords: post-industrial landscape, urban re-development, multifunctionality, heritage, clusters.