Property rights versus stewardship

Industries and families continue to forsake American cities for suburban and formerly rural sites, simultaneously leaving non-productive sites (“brownfields”) in the cities and removing “greenfield” land from agricultural or biologically productive use. With a few exceptions, urban regions that once functioned as communities are continuing to undergo economic and social decline. Discussion or debate about the problem (including whether it is a problem at all) invokes often-unexamined systems of values or worldviews. Students of business, manufacturing engineering, and industrial engineering are taught about the importance of site selection for new production facilities from a competitiveness perspective; but social and environmental impacts per se of these economics based decisions are not part of the criteria. The author argues that decisions regarding new site locations made by manufacturing companies also should include social and environmental values in addition to economic criteria. Because it is in the public interest for companies to incorporate these additional decision criteria, the public policy process must be used to create incentive. A method is offered to help mitigate the problem of colliding worldviews