Redevelopment of defence heritage: the conflict between the political approaches, socioeconomic needs and conservation requirements

Owing to shifts in military technologies and infrastructure, defence properties have become redundant, disposed of and redeveloped. Such a process has been challenging because of the involvement of multiple actors, conflicting interests, and difficulties in removing materials associated with previous uses. Nevertheless, rather than considering surplus military sites as a problem, many countries are recognising the potential benefits of disposing of and redeveloping these military sites. These benefits include job creation, ready-made industrial parks and airports, and conserving heritage buildings through creative reuse. That said, owing to different political and administrative systems and cultural and socioeconomic priorities, the approaches to the disposal and adaptive reuse of military structures are different between countries. Therefore, this paper follows a comparative approach and aims to examine how countries with different policies, challenges and priorities (UK, Germany, US and Turkey) have established distinct regeneration approaches for their military heritage to fulfil socioeconomic and conservation requirements. Following an analysis of the literature, using a key case study from each country, the article assesses to what extent these approaches have contributed to bridging the gap between disposal policies, socio-economic needs, and conservation requirements, highlighting the role of communities, as well as successful and failing attributes in these case studies. While the UK and the US face similar challenges, they have different approaches to redeveloping their military heritage sites; the US prioritises public benefits while the UK focuses on financial returns. European nations have successfully repurposed defence heritage sites for public benefit, but approaches are still different between European countries. For example, Turkey has a different approach from most European countries; although Turkey has made progress in the gradual redevelopment of military sites, it still lacks a clear national strategy. On the other hand, Germany, similar to the US, provides a helpful example of redeveloping military sites as publicly owned land that can generate social, economic, and environmental benefits if valued beyond just financial terms.