Rewilding The City

Rewilding The City traces the emergence of ‘urban rewilding’ as a new form of urban nature conservation with distinct practices, politics, and publics. It investigates the role of cities in nature recovery, bringing together contemporary literatures in political economy, more-than-human geography, and urban ecologies.

Current case studies focus on beaver reintroductions in the UK (London) and Germany (Berlin and Munich); the proliferation (and political ecology) of wildflower meadows in UK cities; urban fragmentation and connectivity; and the changing natures of the greenbelt in the UK.

This project is led by Dr Jonathon Turnbull, Dr Tom Fry, and Professor Jamie Lorimer. Together, they have been developing an affirmative style of critical research on urban nature conservation. As part of this, since 2023, they have collaborated with Citizen Zoo, a London-based NGO leading community-driven urban rewilding initiatives. Citizen Zoo led the UK’s first urban beaver reintroduction in a publicly accessible enclosure in London, a milestone in UK city-based nature recovery. They also work with the non-profit, Stiftung Naturschutz Berlin, a public urban nature conservation organisation. In Newcastle, Jonny has recently started working with Wild Ouseburn, an urban rewilding organisation based in Newcastle’s Ouseburn valley.

In collaboration with Dr Caitlin Hafferty, Jonny and Tom are currently organising a knowledge-exchange workshop series in spring 2026, connecting their Berlin colleagues with London’s rewilding practitioners. The workshops will focus on practical techniques of urban beaver management and the necessary governance structures for managing coexistence with urban wildlife. These workshops are designed to inform the production of an Urban Beaver Strategy Toolkit for use by municipal authorities interested in reintroducing beavers in the UK and elsewhere.