This work aimed to tackle the unprecedented challenge of brownfield redevelopment in the Alpine region. Still largely underrepresented in research as well as unsolved in practice, the complex transformation of mountain brownfields faces very different conditions compared to mainstream urban contexts. Not only these former industrial sites are here physically interfacing with a completely different landscape—where the human factor is omnipresent but rather subtle, mostly ‘unbuilt’—but also their challenging redevelopment is framed into a territorial system with relevant structural limitations—from socioeconomic weaknesses to ecological fragilities, without mentioning institutional, technical and financial shortcomings. The research has first contributed, within its specific scope, to highlight and better define these contextual conditions, with which every brownfield transformation has necessarily to confront. To this purpose, the research collected and gathered ‘on-site’ the main issues that concur to shape the brownfield challenge in the mountain context: the origins of Alpine brownfields as a result of regional-specific industrialisation/deindustrialisation processes; the economic relevance of these brownfields and the related interpretation as territorial capital; the social and cultural meanings of industrial leftovers in the specific context of the Alps and their integration into a larger framework of social and territorial cohesion; the wide-scale ecological value of ecologically compromised sites, in the context of a rapidly changing mountain environment. Bringing together these different views and arguments required a strongly interpretative attitude, especially because none of those has been already directly associated to disused industrial sites in the specific context of the Alps and mountain areas in general. Through the empirical work, and especially the detailed fieldwork-based analysis of the case studies, these contextual conditions were first personally experienced and then concretely addressed in the reasoning on, outlining and testing the sites physical and functional transformation. This research-by-design approach, entailing a fundamental and continuous exchange between facts and things, ideas and spaces, has allowed to define, in the end, an innovative methodology for understanding and addressing the complex transformation of mountain brownfields. At the base of such methodology there is a truly holistic understanding of landscape, meant as the wholeness out there, the sum of human and natural elements and their integration into planned, designed and even accidental superstructures. Similarly to the association between brownfield and mountain regions initially advanced in this research, also the correlation between landscape holism and brownfield transformation required an enormous interpretative effort. A so-called landscape approach to brownfields has been until then used on a highly theoretical level, mainly addressing a few ground-breaking experiences such as those mentioned in this work, not all realised, and thus remaining confined to those only. However, brownfield redevelopment is actually a rather ‘ordinary’ planning issue, applied to hundreds of small and large sites across urbanised territories of the world. This enormous gap between advanced theoretical models and their daily practicability was a motivating issue throughout the whole research, from its initial conception to the last writing phases. With the aim to contribute, at least, to shorten this distance—and driven in that also by the compelling challenge of facing the emerging brownfield issue in the Alps—the research advanced an ‘operative’ reinterpretation of structuralism and systemic approaches used, in a way or another, in the aforementioned ground-breaking experiences of landscape-oriented brownfield transformation. Landscape holism was not just limited, therefore, to the comprehensive view of the ‘out there’, but it was also considered in terms of theoretical and practical wholeness. The idea of landscape as both a conceptual framework and an operative method for brownfield redevelopment in the mountain context, recurring many times throughout these pages, has been rendered active in the empirical ‘climax’ of the research, that is, the four case studies. In testing their transformation, the conceptual understanding of landscape as an implementing structure of a certain territory (Jackson 1984; Turri 2001; Raffestin 2012; Antrop 2017) has been transferred ‘systemically’ into a complex planning process, which often do not consider landscape at all or not so holistically. In this sense, the research has also indirectly contributed to improve the increasingly emerging linkups between spatial planning, urbanism and landscape studies, as indeed required to face the complexity of the contemporary built environment. For what concerns, specifically, the infrastructural qualities of landscape—inherent to a holistic understanding of it—and their application to brownfield transformation, landscape urbanism provided the major source of inspiration in both theories and experiences. Still too vague in its principles and applications, landscape urbanism is not yet fully accepted by traditional planning—as it introduces too much uncertainty—as well as by traditional landscape architecture—as it intends and uses landscape as mainly an engineered design. Nevertheless, exactly this undefined and hybrid character makes of landscape urbanism a potentially valuable thinking and operative framework for complex transformation challenges, such as the one addressed by this research.

Considering the work done and the results achieved so far, especially if compared to the initial ‘emptiness’ faced while approaching this research topic, it can be said, in the end, that the key research questions have largely found their answers while the hypothesis has been demonstrated, at least on a theoretical basis. But as naturally happens in research, new questions and issues are arising at this point:

  • at first, the holistic landscape approach here developed and defined needs certainly to be further refined and especially tested on more, different sites. The methodological basis is there, the sites are also there, as resulted from the mapped geography of Alpine brownfields, so the next step would be to apply and repeat the same procedure both on similar sites (same landscape structures and typologies) and different ones. This can be done either professionally or by means of university teaching, but in all cases (better if interwoven) it necessarily requires a strong supportive scientific framework, which allows the constant assessment of results and thus methodological adjustments. As a planning approach, the structural-systemic method here advanced must be further tested and implemented in cooperation with the relevant local and regional stakeholders. For practical reasons, this aspect could not be directly tackled in the framework of this dissertation, which instead aimed to outline first the method itself, but a next necessary step would be to double-check its feasibility (practicability) with the communities and institutions involved in the redevelopment process. For example, it would be useful to verify whether the identified transformation systems are perceived as realistic by involved stakeholders and, if so, how these can be practically implemented. A valuable help can come, in this sense, from the experience and the outcomes of the already mentioned Interreg “trAILs” project, where for the first time local stakeholders from different Alpine regions were joining together to discuss the future of their own brownfield sites. Following the further testing and implementation with communities, the proposed landscape approach can be transferred, operatively, into a real planning procedure;

  • secondly, a further step which needs to be undertaken is to integrate the spatial scales of analysis used in the empirical work with an additional layer focused on the specific landscape contextual conditions of Alpine brownfields. The three scales used to frame and explore the issue of mountain brownfields—the regional distribution across the whole Alpine space, the typological landscape structure of representative sites, the case study analysis of real-world situations—covered very well the problem on stake, and also responded clearly to the twofold research aim of quantify and qualify Alpine brownfields. However, an intermediate step between the regional geography and the typological landscape structures is now required to better understand the infrastructural relevance of brownfields for contemporary urbanised mountain landscapes (YEAN 2005; Diener et al. 2006; Diamantini 2014). In this regard, an additional focus on the landscape context at the regional scale, that is, on entire valley system, could be one of the most significant follow-ups to this research, almost the ‘natural’ frame that can legitimise and also empower the landscape approach so conceived;

  • lastly, the pioneering nature of this dissertation, both with reference to the topic and the methodology, constitutes alone a reason for its further ‘geographic’ extension. The specific and emerging conditions of mountain brownfields, here investigated and described with reference to the Alps, can be indeed expanded to all those disused or underused complex industrial sites in mountain and peripheral regions in general, i.e. sharing similar socioeconomic, environmental and urban conditions. As already identified in the first pages of this dissertation, and clearly verified later on, what makes the difference here is not really the content of the brownfield site itself, but more the relationships it established with its surroundings—that, in turn, are very different from the ‘usual’ context of urban brownfields. For all those former industrial sites located in these specific contexts it can be coined a definition of ‘decentralised brownfields’, as to underline their outward-oriented location compared those similar sites instead ‘squeezed’ into central and dense urban patterns. The current situation in the Alps—a rather dynamic mountain region compared to others in Europe and beyond—suggests that the transformation and redevelopment of most of these decentralised brownfields is yet to be defined, before being concretely achieved.

The fact that at the end of such a thorough research there are still many open question and issues on stake is not a sign of failure, but indeed it shows that the work done so far is really promising, and therefore worth to be carried on. In this case, this doctoral dissertation can certainly be considered as a starting point, rather than simply an achievement.