Urban wilderness

Urban wilderness is vacant property in urban areas that is reverted to its original biome and repurposed for recreation.[1] This is part of the New Urbanism movement that seeks to combine greenery in urban planning.[2] Urban wilderness is also seen as a way to use abandoned land from city shrinkage.[3][4] This concept is especially popular in Europe[5] and the United States.[6]

Overview

Key traits of urban wilderness that differentiate it from lawns and other forms of plantings are:

  1. Biodiversity - a wide range of species, both of plants and animals[7]
  2. Minimal maintenance required for viability - plants that can survive without frequent watering, can withstand local pollution levels, and do not depend on infusions of fertilizers or other periodic soil amendments, often called xeriscaping.[8]
  3. Deep beds - deep soil allowing the creation of mature root growth, protection from drought and destructive temperature changes, and the development of a healthy colony of microorganisms, worms, and other beneficial small lifeforms
  4. Native species - use of local plant varieties rather than [[exotic species|exotic species
  5. Unstructured aesthetic - plants are allowed to grow as they wish, where they wish, with minimal space devoted to paved walkways, trimmed grass, or other artificial environments
  6. Tolerance of ground cover and thick undergrowth - healthy ecosystems depend on "messy" micro-environments like decaying logs, thick brush, and muddy ground.

Urban wilderness has been created by programs as varied as the New York City Parks Department's Green Streets program (which converts median strips and other micro-environments into planted areas) and small programs in such places as Davis, California and Portland, Oregon to reintroduce native species.[9]

History

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the urbanization of cities. Jacob Riis and other reformers fought for parks in urban areas.[10]

While many societies had traditions of intense urban plantings, such as the rooftops of pre-conquistador Mexico City, these traditions did not reemerge on a larger scale in the industrialized world until the creation of naturalistic urban parks, such as the ones by Calvert Vaux[11] and Frederick Law Olmsted.[12]

More recently, groups such as squatters and Reclaim The Streets have performed guerrilla plantings, worked in and on abandoned buildings, and torn holes in highway asphalt to fill with soil and flowers.[13] These actions have been effective in creating new planted zones in economically stagnant areas like urban eastern Germany, where abandoned buildings have been reverted to forest-like conditions.[14]

See also

References
  1. Zefferman, Emily P.; McKinney, Michael L.; Cianciolo, Thomas; Fritz, Bridgette I. (2018-01-01). "Knoxville's urban wilderness: Moving toward sustainable multifunctional management". Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. Wild urban ecosystems: challenges and opportunities for urban development. 29: 357–366. doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2017.09.002. ISSN 1618-8667.
  2. Forman, Richard T. T. (2008). Urban regions : ecology and planning beyond the city. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-40977-6. OCLC 236162008.
  3. Burkholder, Sean (2012-06-05). "The New Ecology of Vacancy: Rethinking Land Use in Shrinking Cities". Sustainability. 4 (6): 1154–1172. doi:10.3390/su4061154. ISSN 2071-1050.
  4. Johnson, Michael P.; Hollander, Justin; Hallulli, Alma (2014-10-01). "Maintain, demolish, re-purpose: Policy design for vacant land management using decision models". Cities. Vacant land: The new urban green?. 40: 151–162. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2013.05.005. ISSN 0264-2751.
  5. Kowarik, Ingo; Körner, Stefan, eds. (2005). Wild Urban Woodlands. doi:10.1007/b138211. ISBN 3-540-23912-X.
  6. Chicago Wilderness Region Urban Forest Vulnerability Assessment and Synthesis: A Report from the Urban Forestry Climate Change Response Framework Chicago Wilderness Pilot Project (PDF). United States Forest Service. April 2017.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  7. "What is biodiversity?" (PDF). What is biodiversity?. February 2010. Retrieved March 4, 2023.
  8. Growing greener cities : urban sustainability in the twenty-first century. Susan M. Wachter, Eugenie Ladner Birch. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-8122-0409-4. OCLC 794702270.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  9. "Greenstreets Program". portal.311.nyc.gov. Retrieved 2022-09-21.
  10. "Jacob Riis: The Photographer Who Showed "How the Other Half Lives" in 1890s NYC". My Modern Met. 2020-07-22. Retrieved 2021-09-14.
  11. "Calvert Vaux Park Highlights - Calvert Vaux Park : NYC Parks". www.nycgovparks.org. Retrieved 2021-09-14.
  12. Brookline, Mailing Address: 99 Warren Street; Us, MA 02445 Phone:566-1689 Contact. "Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2021-09-14.
  13. Jordan, John (2009-04-20), "Reclaim the Streets", in Ness, Immanuel (ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, pp. 1–6, doi:10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1240, ISBN 978-1-4051-9807-3, retrieved 2022-10-10
  14. "Urban Wilderness". Städte wagen Wildnis (in German). Retrieved 2021-09-14.
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