brownfield

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

For noun sense 1, brownfield is more specific than site or lot. A site can be any place for building, and a lot is an everyday word for a piece of land, often without any idea of its history. Brownfield usually suggests a place in a town or city that had an earlier commercial or industrial use and may need cleaning before reuse. Industrial site points more directly to factory use, but it does not always suggest that the place is now empty or being planned for redevelopment. Greenfield is the main opposite: it describes land that has not been developed before. You might say, 'The city bought the brownfield for new homes,' but 'They chose a greenfield outside town.'

Etymology

Brownfield is a modern English planning term built from brown and field. The color word suggests land marked by former industrial use, in contrast with greenfield for untouched land. It became common in late twentieth-century discussions about cleaning and reusing older urban sites.