A very large site in the centre of Norwich is an example of precisely that . Where there's a will....
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PICTURE the scene. It’s 1997 and a young reporter for Anglia TV is covering plans to revive a rundown part of Norwich with new flats, pubs and a cinema. The land is so contaminated that the media have to wear steel toe-capped boots, voluminous yellow overalls and safety glasses. It’s this particular reporter’s debut “piece to camera” and he looks suitably awkward, not to say ridiculous, as a result.
The soil on the site ran thick with the waste of several decades of heavy industrial use, some of it from the railway, much more from a famous Norwich name – the manufacturers Boulton & Paul. Thousands worked here over the decades. The contaminated land would become the Riverside development (pictured above)"
http://riversidenorwich.blogspot.com/2013/05/wanted-memories-of-boulton-paul.html