Brownfields, properties abandoned or underused due to former contaminations and/or associated environmental stigma, has long been one of pervasive environmental problems and a critical sustainable development concern in developed countries. We are yet to face the brownfields issues, most likely due to the nation’s relatively short history of hazardous waste site regulation and its liability burdens imposed. We advocate a proactive policy initiative by the central government for revitalization of brownfields located in economically distressed areas, which shares many of the characteristics that led to the problems associated with the stigma of brownfields in the U.S, including, most notably, unknown or insolvent responsible parties, and reluctance of third-party acquisition and reuse due to difficulties in recovering cost of site remediation. For the new policy direction, we suggest a community-driven local brownfields restoration and reuse program in which local governments and residents of impacted communities work in partnership with the central government and private developers towards local empowerment. The term “local brownfields” indicates soil and groundwater contaminated properties that are located in disenfranchised areas while sharing the common characteristics of brownfields. Investigated nationwide distribution of the potential local brownfields, and the reviews of the U.S. and Japanese brownfields redevelopment cases studies, we identified the key factors for successful brownfields redevelopment, including a local development vision, leadership and a strong public-private partnership. We added a critical overview of the brownfields redevelopment experiences within the nation. For the analysis of the cases, we developed a set of assessment indicators evaluating the three substantiality pillars of environment, economy, and society, and the results of surveys on the local government officials and experts regarding the demands, administrative priorities, and prospects of the local brownfields revitalization. As a result, we suggest a targeted strategy framework for the local brownfields revitalization: the revitalization should accomplish three sequential goals of (1) recovering environmental potential of the contaminated sites, (2) community-driven redevelopment, and (3) local empowering and life quality enhancement. To achieve these goals, a targeted strategy framework is needed, for the four categories of the local brownfields, classified based on the environmental and economic potentials:(1) central government-driven (high environmental potential, low economic potential); (2) private development (low environmental potential, high economic potential); (3) priority-based (low environmental potential, low economic potential); and (4) local government-driven (high environmental potential, high economic potential).