Rewilding the City… A new discourse on urban rewilding.

Rewilding has become established as a new mode of nature conservation. There is a growing body of science, ambitious landscape-scale plans, and increasing political will. But until recently, cities and the urban were neglected; the idea of urban rewilding seen as oxymoronic. Of late, however, there has been a shift, with growing enthusiasm amongst metropolitan authorities, civil society, and citizens in major cities like London, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne, as well as smaller cities around the world.

Noting a dearth of research on urban rewilding, researchers at the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery proffer an agenda for future geographical research into this emerging mode of urban nature conservation.

Their newly published paper deploys the spatial-optical metaphor of diffraction, which originates in feminist science studies, to explore how rewilding as a socioecological practice developed in rural areas is changed when it encounters the urban, drawing on recent work in urban theory to trace how the urban might inform a new model of rewilding better equipped for the novel ecosystems and political configurations of the increasingly urban Anthropocene.

Dr. Jonathon Turnbull, is a researcher in more than human geography, whose research examines how understandings of nature are produced and contested across geographical contexts and why this matters for more-than-human social, political, and economic life.

Aesthetic dimensions of urban rewilding are important factors shaping how this emerging mode of urban nature recovery unfolds. The nascency of urban rewilding presents opportunities for geographers to prefigure a progressive mode of Anthropocene conservation.

The paper establishes future priorities for research into urban rewilding, including exploring minoritarian cultures of nature, comparative analysis of diverse cases, and examination of rural–urban linkages.

Read the full paper:

(Re)wilding London: Fabric, politics, and aesthetics by Jonathon Turnbull, Tom Fry, Jamie Lorimer