Since the late 1970s, many European urban areas have embarked on a complex process of physical and functional restructuring following extensive deindustrialization phenomena. In this context, the revitalisation of local and regional economies, as well as the improvement of social and environmental conditions, have found a common ground in the transformation of brownfields, i.e. “derelict or underused sites that have been affected by the former [industrial] uses of the site and surrounding land; may have real or perceived contamination problems; are mainly [found] in developed urban areas; and require intervention to bring them back to beneficial use” (Oliver et al. 2005). To tackle the unprecedented challenge of brownfield redevelopment, and to effectively highlight its multi-scalar and interdisciplinary character, new planning and design strategies have been since then developed and widely adopted (Hauser 2001; Baum and Christiaanse 2012; Braae 2015). The rehabilitation of disused industrial sites has thus become increasingly relevant in many regional, national and EU policies addressing sustainable territorial development, especially due to its notable contribution to sustainable urban growth and large-scale regeneration processes (Ferber et al. 2006).

The often central location of most brownfields in respect to large urban systems, as well as their proximity to key infrastructural nodes, make their redevelopment strategically relevant to sustain land recycling processes at the regional scale (European Environment Agency 2016). This is particularly evident in major urban agglomerations, where the structural transition to post-Fordism has fostered the territorial ‘explosion’ of the city through the intertwined processes of urban sprawl (Couch, Petschel-Held, and Leontidou 2008) and urban shrinking (Oswalt and Rieniets 2006). Here, vacant industrial land and redundant infrastructural spaces—often so well integrated into the urban fabric to be referred as 'voids'—are offering a better alternative in terms of available and accessible built land to undeveloped greenfields and semi-natural spaces in the outskirts (Schulze Baing 2010). Depending on the specific framework conditions, brownfield redevelopment can support urban densification—either by adaptively reusing the existing built heritage or building anew—as well as helping to improve the ecological conditions of deprived urban areas—through the creation of green infrastructures, recreational spaces and, in some extreme cases, also by bringing ‘back-to-nature’ former built or contaminated areas. Accordingly, brownfield redevelopment is capable of influencing the spatial form and the environmental impact of urban settlements.

At the same time, the recycling of derelict industrial land helps to improve the socioeconomic conditions of deindustrialising and transitional urban contexts, by fostering a localised functional diversification/upgrade (Couch, Fraser, and Percy 2003). The physical transformation of the inherited, former industrial ‘topographies’ always carries on a functional program, which in turn has to mirror in the new layout and appearance of the site itself. This is an incredibly complex challenge, as it brings together often conflicting perspectives and aims such as heritage conservation and architectural production, economic and real estate development and social inclusion and identity (Mieg and Oevermann 2015). In this respect, the planning concept of 'mixed-use development' has gained particular success in relation to brownfield revitalisation projects, as its functional inclusiveness perfectly matches the physical and programmatic flexibility of disused industrial land. Over time, this matching has proved to work out good not only for what concerns traditional urban functions, such as housing, business and services, but also and especially for catalyst functions with a truly regenerative power such as art and culture, education, recreation and leisure (Hospers 2004; Dixon et al. 2007). In this way, brownfield transformation as (also) an act of innovative functional regeneration can trigger long-term socio-economic restructuring and urban renewal processes.

1 Brownfields in Mountain Regions

The interwoven occurrence of industry, deindustrialisation and brownfields in mainstream urban settings, such as inner cities and urban-industrial agglomerations, is widely acknowledged. Most of the scientific as well as practical knowledge gained so far—including challenges, opportunities and conversion strategies—is based on case studies and experiences derived exactly from these contexts. However, many relevant and context-specific industrial activities have developed, to a certain extent, also in peripheral urban and semi-urban regions, either in mature or restructuring and developing economies (Ian Hamilton 1986). European mountain ranges are highly indicative in this sense, not only because of their historically documented industrial development (Kopp 1969; Raffestin and Crivelli 1988; Muller 1995; Collantes 2003), but also because today these regions are still showing a proportion of secondary sector employment similar or even higher than in the adjoining lowlands (Nordregio 2004). Nevertheless, the common tendency to overrepresent mountain contexts as predominantly rural and recreational regions, sparsely populated and economically relying on agroforestry, wilderness and tourism, leaves industry, and especially the presence of brownfield sites, out of the debate on the contemporary mountain socio-economic landscape. Some studies have however highlighted how a structural change in industry is occurring also in peripheral mountain regions across central, eastern and southern Europe (Müller, Finka, and Lintz 2006; Dalmasso 2007; Bonomi 2012; Weissenbacher 2014), and in particular how this decline is imputable to the scarce resilience inherent to most of the industrial activities there existing—resource-intensive sectors, low added value chains, poor competitiveness.

In this regard, the AlpsFootnote 1 can be assumed as an exemplary case of deindustrialising mountain areas due to their ‘advanced’ socio-economic development—compared to other mountain regions in Europe and worldwide—and a rather high level of industrial maturity. The strategic location at the crossroads of European trade routes and dynamic metropolises and agglomerations has favoured, throughout the 20th century, the increasing economic integration of the Alpine region into national and global networks, thus fostering also here a widespread yet spatially uneven transition from primary and secondary sectors to services (Perlik 2019). However, while most of the non-Alpine regions of France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Austria have largely completed their post-industrial conversion—having thus assimilated the related socioeconomic and spatial impacts—, in the Alps the same process is still ongoing (Modica 2019), being relented by the inherent structural shortcomings of a developed yet still peripheral economy (Bätzing 2015). As evidenced in Fig. 1.1, between 1975 and 2000 the employment rate in the secondary sector shifted from 50% to 36% in Alpine regionsFootnote 2 and from 41% to 20% in Alpine countries entirely considered (France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Slovenia). Alpine regions experienced in this first phase a more contained decrease of manufacturing jobs (‒14) compared to national averages (‒21), revealing therefore a still stronger presence of industry in the regional economy—although with significant local variations. In the following fifteen years (2001–2016), however, this declining trend almost flattened at the national level, reaching an average of 18% (−2), while keeping lowering down with the same intensity in the Alpine regions, reaching 23% (‒13). The economic crisis of 2008–2010 has significantly contributed to the late speedup of Alpine deindustrialization (Brozzi et al. 2015), clearly revealing the inherent structural weaknesses of mountain industry.

As evidenced by Werner Bätzing in his influential research on the Alpine cultural landscape, heavy and manufacturing industries have settled in mountainous rural regions primarily to take advantage of key ‘environmental’ conditions, such as the availability of mineral resources, the on-site use of hydropower, abundant low wage workforce as well as political/financial incentives (Bätzing 2015). The resulting industrial mono-structure, firmly attached to specific locational factors and thus highly dependent on external framework conditions, is extremely vulnerable to macro-economic changes and technological shifts as well. The deindustrialisation of the Alps, and mountain and peripheral economic regions in general, can be then explained as the passive reaction of traditional, resource-intensive industries to the new global geography of raw materials and energy sources, which entails the relocation of associated production chains in highly accessible locations (even regionally) or in developing countries (Gebhardt 1990; Perlik 2007; Bartaletti 2011). In this context, and having the Alps as remarkable example, it is reasonable to expect a moderate if not locally relevant presence of industrial brownfield sites in mountain areas too; a presence that will probably increase in the forthcoming years, due to the temporal delay accumulated in comparison to lowland industrial and urban agglomerations. As evidenced by Grimski and Ferber, “rural areas within the EU also contain individual derelict sites […] that may be very significant for the relevant local government authorities concerned, [who] are often unable to solve the problems involved and so do not develop any area revitalisation activities” (Grimski and Ferber 2001: 144). Indeed, the redevelopment of brownfield sites already is, or will soon constitute, a key challenge for the affected mountain territories. The acquisition of a sound scientific knowledge on brownfield transformation in mountain contexts, and its transfer into practice as well, is therefore essential to support the local and regional communities in this complex process. The fact that brownfield sites are confronted, in the mountain context, with radically different socioeconomic, environmental and spatial conditions than in lowland urban areas, underlines the relevance and the urgency of finding appropriate solutions to this challenge.

Fig. 1.1
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(Source: author’s own representation. Data: European Commission, Alpine Convention, OECD, Swiss Federal Statistics Office)

Employment rate in the secondary sector in Alpine regions and Alpine countries.

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2 Context, rather than Content

The background processes that have originated and shaped brownfields are generally similar by industrial typologies, that is, derived from specific production processes and ‘represented’ by certain standard facilities. In this respect, what seems to be determinant for understanding the actual condition of brownfields in mountain regions is more the influence of the context of the site itself, rather than simply its content (Fig. 1.2 and 1.3). Given two brownfield sites with a similar productive background, one in a peripheral mountain setting and the other in a central urban location, the main differences are supposed not to lay within the site itself, within its spatial structure and builtscape, but mostly on the edges of it and in the immediate surroundings, i.e. on a wider space which coincides with the landscape (footprint) the site itself generates. The complex and dual relationship between the brownfield site and its context can be certainly interpreted in terms of space (physical, ‘environmental’), but also indirectly assessed by assuming as context the social, cultural and economic features of the hosting territory. Both these perspectives are extremely relevant, and worth equal attention, when dealing with brownfield transformation and redevelopment, as learned during the Interreg Alpine Space project “trAILs—Alpine Industrial Landscape Transformation”Footnote 3, and in particular during the development of the assessment and test-design activities in the four partner regions (Weilacher and Modica 2021).

The physical conditions of mountain brownfields are clearly determined by the spatial structure of mountain landscapes, which is in turn influenced by very different land uses, settlement patterns, topographic and environmental features than lowland urban areas. In mountain areas, land uses are characterised by a net prevalence of the ‘unbuilt’ over built spaces. While this apparently fosters the physical and visual detachment of the site from the surroundings, it actually blurs the edges of the site itself, especially in case of large-scale brownfields with high proportion of unbuilt land within the perimeter. This condition is crucial to plan a future redevelopment that takes into account the real footprint of the site, and thus the wider impacts of transformation. The variable topographical harshness, from hilly to mountainous, determines a scarcity of available land for settlements in these contexts. At the local level, brownfields usually occupy a relevant portion of the little suitable land for settlements, either of natural or artificial origin. This increases a lot the strategic role these sites for local spatial development, especially when the brownfield location intercepts key infrastructural corridors. Furthermore, the ‘absence’ of the cityFootnote 4 determined by a scattered and fragmented urban fabric challenges the traditional contextualisation of brownfields as voids within dense urban patchworks. If only considering building footprint and infrastructural complexity, industrial sites in mountain regions are indeed ‘thicker’ than the surroundings—an aspect which makes of brownfields a key structural element of the dispersed urbanity of mountain regions. Last but not least, mountain areas are well known for their extensive and biologically rich ecological networks, where vast semi-natural environments, preserved habitats and cross-regional biodiversity corridors are the rule. In most cases, due to the specific location of industry close to resources hotspots (water courses, mineral deposits, forests, etc.), brownfield sites are directly interfaced with the nodes of ecological networks. This is relevant not only in terms of landscape and environmental mitigation, but also and mostly in relation to the management of potential contamination impacts. The hazardous content of abandoned and polluted industrial sites can easily reach considerable distances if accidentally 'introduced' in the environmental network, thus affecting the ecological equilibriums on a very large scale (e.g. river systems). This aspect betrays a higher ‘environmental sensitivity’ in scarcely urbanised mountain regions than in most of built-up, core urban areas. An issue which strongly influences (not to say limits) brownfield redevelopment in these particular contexts.

The non-physical conditions, to which mountain brownfields are also but indirectly confronted, are equally relevant and to some extent even more influential for the redevelopment process than the spatial constraints. These mainly refer to the regional socio-economic structure and the local management capabilities, i.e. to the framework conditions that enable or prevent brownfields revitalisation to take place. The first condition to which mountain brownfields are generally confronted is the economic system, often less dynamic and structurally weak compared to that of urban regions. Middle-mountain regions bordering large metropolitan regions, for example, are mostly relying on activities ‘expelled’ from fast-developing cores (but often complementary), such as agriculture and forestry, low added value manufacturing, leisure and tourism. Technology-based activities, advanced education, research and financial services are by contrary very limited. The absence of a dynamic and expanding market reduces considerably the economic opportunities connected to brownfield revitalisation, thus calling local and regional public institutions for action in replacement. And then the second problematic condition is reached, that is, the lack of powerful institutional and socio-economic actors and management capacities at the local level. This directly relates to the administrative and demographic fragmentation of mountain regions, where heterogeneous and vast territories are indeed covered by several small and sparse municipalities without a dominant urban or metropolitan area. The redevelopment of large and complex brownfield sites requires, in these specific contexts, a very good coordination among the different administrative levels, possibly under the ‘planning’ supervision of a regional authority. In many cases, however, the burdening issue of brownfield revitalisation actually remains for large part in the hand of the affected small communities, with the consequence that only a few concrete actions are occasionally undertaken. Last but not least, the successful redevelopment of mountain brownfields is also strongly determined by demographic trends and redevelopment pressure at the regional and local level. Many mountain areas, for example, are experiencing continuous depopulation in favour of more attracting metropolitan cores. This phenomenon is however highly differentiated at the local level, where a demographic and socio-economic polarisation can be observed between concentration poles (main urban centres, regional capitals or highly urbanised valleys) and leftover marginal areas (rural regions or formerly industrial valleys). The localisation of brownfields in one or the other context is therefore extremely influential on the redevelopment process: while in the first case the demand might be average to high, although with a limited associated economic potential, in the second case it is generally low and limited to environmental concernsFootnote 5. These aspects, together with the aforementioned spatial conditions, make of brownfield redevelopment in mountain contexts an undoubtedly complex challenge.

Fig. 1.2
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The former Hanfwerke (hemp spinning mill) in Füssen, Ostallgäu

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Fig. 1.3
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The former Kammgarnspinnerei (worsted spinning mill) in Augsburg, being redeveloped

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3 Incomplete Transformations

In geo-economic peripheries, such as mountain regions and the Alps in particular, the closure and dismantling of even one single industrial site can become a serious concern as well as a decisive matter for regional development. The urgency to make the site socially and economically profitable again leads to approach the complexity of brownfield redevelopment from solely an economic perspective, that is, to prioritise the short-term employment returns. To this end, a ‘simplified’ transformation process, which completely or largely ignores the physical and non-physical contextual conditions, actually takes place. This leads in turn to incomplete, imbalanced and, on the long-term, problematic outcomes, as demonstrated by many unsuccessful brownfield redevelopment stories across the Alpine region. Two main strategies are identifiable as representative of this situation: building recycling and land recycling.

The first one aims at the economic relaunch of the site by prioritising the low-budget and low-profile adaptive reuse (literally recycling) of main buildings and other built structures over the site in its totality. Motivated by the possibility to quickly accommodate small-scale business and activities in disused industrial spaces, the building recycling strategy is characterized by the absence of long-term redevelopment plans, either regarding environmental remediation or the future spatial organisation of the site. The reuse of the existing buildings and surrounding open spaces takes place as an incremental, unregulated and spatially fragmented process, having the goal of functionality and usability as the main driver. This leads on the one hand to the temporary or permanent reactivation of those indoor/outdoor spaces in better conditions—often through minimal structural interventions which ignore the existing architectural and/or ecological values—while on the other hand the most polluted, derelict and generally challenging buildings/areas are left to inexorable decay. The partial dismantling of a closed or closing down site over an extended period of time might facilitate the building recycling strategy, as portions of the former industrial site become progressively available to new ownerships. An exemplary case of that is the former Münichtal ironworks (Fig. 1.4) in the historical mining centre of Eisenerz, in the Austrian Upper Styria region (Modica and Weilacher 2020). After the early shut down of the blast furnaces in 1945 and the following slow disassembling until the early 1980s, the derelict and partially emptied site has been used in variable intensity by different companies dealing with scrap metal recycling—linked to the regional steelmaking sector. Most of these activities ceased after some time due to failure or relocation, thus challenging the economic future of the site and its relevance for the deprived local community (Migliorati and Veronesi 2020). At the same time, significant environmental issues have made their appearance on the scene, such as the reclamation of the former blast furnace area as well as of the huge, abandoned slag heap, yet unresolved. A similar story is that of the former Pechiney aluminium smelter in L’Argentière-la-Bessée (Fig. 1.5), in the upper Durance valley not far from Briançon, Hautes Alpes (Combal 2018). After eighty years of aluminium production, the smelter closed down for good in 1985, leaving the entire valley community deprived of the only significant industrial activity in the region. The less ecologically compromised portion of the site has been roughly repurposed, through a public-financed consortium, for small-scale and low-profile businesses, while most of the existing productive halls were recycled to host a foundry and smelting facility. As the latter eventually closed down in turn in 2011, the acquisition of the derelict and polluted land became the goal of the regional community, which only succeeded in late 2019. If a comprehensive and organic development plan for the site will ever be outlined (and possibly implemented), it would be the chance to address the many still open issues such as land reclamation, the management of river flooding and the valorisation of industrial heritage.

Fig. 1.4
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The Münichtal site in Eisenerz, partially occupied by scrap recycling businesses

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Fig. 1.5
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The former Pechiney site in L’Argentière-la-Bessée

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Fig. 1.6
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Overview of the Atofina brownfield in Brignoud (Villard-Bonnot)

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Fig. 1.7
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The former Falck site in Novate Mezzola, cleared yet unreclaimed

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When the incremental, yet uncertain, recycling of existing buildings and infrastructures is not foreseeable, a ‘clearing out’ strategy is set out instead. The content of the site in terms of buildings, structures and open spaces is entirely or to a great extent removed, so that after soil and groundwater remediation the land can be prepared to host new developments. In the best case, which is indeed very rare, the reclamation process is largely completed but the establishment of new activities struggles to take place on the long-term, due to the lack of investors and/or locational difficulties in attracting firms or developers. It was the case of the former SEFE carbide and ferroalloys factory in Sellero, in the Camonica Valley (Lombardian Alps), where it took around ten years from the five-hectares site clearing to its commercial and productive redevelopment. Or that of the former HCB-Holcim cement factory site in Roche, in the Rhone valley (Swiss Vaud), which was closed down in 1994, demolished in 2002, then sold to the municipality and, nevertheless, to date only half redeveloped as industrial estate. In the worst-case scenario, quite common, the reclamation process stops after the first stages (e.g. the removal of building) due to the high costs of environmental remediation and the related financial, technical or legal uncertainties. The polluted site remains then derelict and empty for long time, causing a potential loss to the regional economy—especially if the social cost of remediation and redevelopment has burdened mostly on public authorities. It is the case of the Atofina brownfield in Brignoud, not far from Grenoble, a twelve-hectares heavily polluted site resulted from the complete demolition of the previous chemical factory in 2004 (Fig. 1.6), whose environmental reclamation is lagging behind due to legal controversies and uncertain future plans. A similar story is that of the former Falck ferrochromium factory in Novate Mezzola (Fig. 1.7), in the Valchiavenna region, where after the closure in 1990 and the clearing of the site three different owners have succeeded without being able to complete the necessary and urgent remediation.

Both the aforementioned strategies seem to hide a deep conflict between economic and environmental goals—with social advantages associated to one or the other according to the specific situation. In the land recycling strategies, the site clearing as the precondition to and the result of ecological rehabilitation turns into an obstacle for the economic redevelopment, actually impeding the establishment of new activities for long time. At the same time, the precarious reuse of existing spaces in the building recycling strategy succeeds into fostering a partial economic-oriented site redevelopment while leaving environmental and ecological issues mostly unsolved. In the specific context of mountain regions, the balancing between economic development and environmental regeneration goals represents a major planning challenge in the complex management of brownfield sites. The high environmental sensitivity of these contexts, united to the fragile socio-economic structure, are clearly ‘feeding’ this challenge.

4 A Different Approach

Considering the structural limits of brownfield redevelopment in mountain regions, well expressed through the specific contextual conditions and the usually applied transformation strategies in the Alps, it seems reasonable to call for a conceptual shift on the ‘nature’ of mountain brownfields themselves. A successful reconversion strategy, able to equally meet environmental, economic and social development goals in the given framework conditions, cannot avoid, in this specific context, to consider the complex relationships established between the site and its ‘breeding’ environment. Instead of a self-standing and enclosed area, an isolated object in the landscape, the brownfield site should be more realistically perceived as a ‘hub’ of relational systems reaching out on the territory. The brownfield site is indeed an integral part of a wider landscape, with which it establishes physical and functional relationships, generating recognisable topographies and specific environments mutually influencing the site actual conditions as well as its future transformation (Fig. 1.8). Practically, this means to replace the classical ‘inward’ approach used in the redevelopment of urban brownfields with an outward orientation, in which the physical and programmatic dialogue between the site and its context is essential to fully realise the transformation potential. These considerations are not entirely brand new, but they are freely inspired by one of the first definitions of industrial landscape provided by the architectural historian Franco Borsi back in the 1970s, on the basis of empirical evidence in declining mining and heavy industry regions of north-western Europe (Borsi 1975, 1978). Among the first to extend the emerging discourse on industrial archaeology beyond the mere architectural/building scale, Borsi noticed indeed how the ‘modelling force’ of industry “[…] left behind not only a series of architectural ruins but also a veritable change in the landscape […]” (Borsi 1975: 38). Accordingly, “[…] the factory cannot be considered by itself, as architectural typology or in its historic-technological aspects, but has to be seen as the barycentre of a system to which, in close functional connection, belong houses, roads, leisure places and services, landscape aspects and so on and so forth. Only in this way it can be identified a structure that is clearly located within a territorial area—having therefore influences and relations induced with the area itself—, of which it constitutes a factor of physical transformation”Footnote 6 (Borsi 1978: 43). Fed by dynamic cultural, economic and environmental forces, the organic complexity of this landscape survives to the decline and disappearance of industry forming then the conceptual and formal context of the transformation of the site itself.

Fig. 1.8
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The proposed conceptual shift on the understanding of brownfield sites, from functionless enclave (left) in central urban contexts to territorial infrastructure (right) in mountain areas

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Based on these premises and considering once more the aforementioned physical and non-physical special conditions, a re-contextualisation of brownfield sites in mountain regions as ‘territorial infrastructures’ is then proposed. The term ‘infrastructure’ is here understood both in terms of design/form—the site is strongly embedded in the landscape, of which it represents a key structural element to be physically reorganised—and program/function—the site as a functionally devoid space, whose transformation will influence the development of a wider territorial context. The ecological rehabilitation and the economic revitalisation of the site take place therefore through the ‘reactivation’ of the infrastructure itself, that is, through the update/upgrade of the relational systems established between the site and its surroundings. In other words, it means to address an extensive but integrated adaptive reuse of the landscape which belongs to the site and in which the site is immersed, rather than just of the site itself.

Given this challenging framework and task, traditional architecture and urban planning strategies normally used in the redevelopment of well-located, central brownfields, rather static if not ‘hyper-designed’, do not seem adequate for the purpose. On the contrary, the hybridised architectural-planning principles of landscape urbanism seem to hold a greater potential in this sense, especially for the proposed use of ‘landscape’ as both a conceptual and performative medium to address transformative processes in a context of lacking or weak urbanity (Waldheim 2016). Furthermore, a specifically designed transformation approach for brownfields in mountain contexts can take great advantage from the emphasis given by landscape urbanism theories and models to the infrastructural (or ecological) qualities of landscape (Bélanger 2016). The challenge of using such an approach is to combine the ‘structural significance’ of landscape (Weller 2006), or the ‘relational structuring’ of its composing elements (Marot 1999), with the systemic, ‘ecologic’ functioning of landscape as infrastructure (Berger 2009). The added value of such an approach lies in its broad-spectrum applicability, that is, in the ability to address the transformation and redevelopment of individual brownfield sites and, hence, of wider territorial contexts. While at first glance this broadening of perspective may seem to tend to increase the complexity of an already demanding challenge, it holds actually the key to learn to consciously manage the emerging issue of mountain brownfield redevelopment. It is a matter of shifting the view and the scale, to focus on interdependencies rather than objects, on performances rather than forms. An holistic understanding of landscape as an interdisciplinary action field (Antrop 2017), a matching ground of many interests, practices and dynamics, is believed to be an essential prerequisite to the successful development of the proposed approach.