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ModeratorThe word rewilding used to conjure up images of wolves and remote valleys. Increasingly, though, it's being applied to cities. Owen, what does urban rewilding actually mean in practice?
OwenAt its simplest, it means stepping back. Rather than designing every green space down to the last flowerbed, you allow natural processes to take over, at least in part. Mowing verges twice a year instead of every fortnight, letting dead wood lie, bringing back to the surface rivers that were buried in concrete pipes decades ago. The results can be startlingly quick. In some of the sites we monitor, insect diversity has roughly doubled within three seasons.
ModeratorHannah, as a planner, are you persuaded?
HannahBy the ecology, yes. My reservations are about the politics. There's a real risk that rewilding becomes a polite word for neglect, particularly in poorer neighbourhoods. If a park in a wealthy area goes wild, it's celebrated as biodiversity. If the same thing happens on a housing estate, residents quite reasonably ask why their area is being left to decline.
OwenThat's a fair point, and frankly one that ecologists have been slow to grasp. Long grass reads as abandonment unless people are brought into the process.
HannahExactly. The schemes that work are the ones where residents have had a genuine say from the outset, not simply been consulted after the decisions were made. And you need visible signs of care: a mown path through a meadow, a sign explaining what's going on. Wildness, paradoxically, has to look intentional.
ModeratorOwen, is there a tension between that and what the ecology needs?
OwenLess than you'd think. Wildlife is remarkably tolerant of a tidy edge. What it can't tolerate is fragmentation, which is why the real prize isn't the individual park but the connections between them: railway embankments, gardens, canal towpaths. A city is only as wild as its corridors.
