Lackawanna Steel Plant, New York

This steel plant was once one of the world’s largest, with 20,000 employees in 1940s. It opened in 1902, and closed in 1982, and is now a landscape of piles of different kinds of post-industrial earth and partially demolished ruins. It officially became a Superfund site in 1988, and an official brownfield in 2003. The Gateway Trade Center is the redevelopment company, working with the Port of Buffalo to develop the site. Windmills, installed in 2007, generate 25 megawatts. There are still some steel finishing and steel scrap businesses working in the sheds at the southern end of the zone.