Brownfield sites are a major problem in every industrialized nation and, as such, brownfield redevelopment has become an important theme in the environmental policy of many governments. This paper describes the need for new brownfield-specific sustainability and indicator frameworks (encompassing social, economic, environmental and institutional aspects) that can be used to benchmark the success of redevelopment. Hitherto, there has been no universally accepted definition of the term ‘sustainable brownfield regeneration’, either general or specific. This paper endeavours to rectify this by proposing a new definition for ‘sustainable brownfield regeneration’. The paper is structured in three parts: the first aspect examines the historical development of the sustainability concept; the second aspect examines the requirement for new sustainability and indicator frameworks by examining existing sets of sustainability indicators; the third part proposes RESCUE’s definition of ‘sustainable brownfield regeneration’ and describes its constituent parts. RESCUE is the acronym for Regeneration of European Sites in Cities and Urban Environments – a research project in the 5th Framework Programme of the European Community (Cities of Tomorrow and Cultural Heritage). This paper is the result of the combined efforts of many RESCUE partners, organizations which are represented by the members of the contributor panel.