City Know-hows
Target audience
Urban leaders at both regional and local levels
The problem
Londoner’s can adapt, change and transform, their gardens to positively impact on biodiversity. This behaviour require a conscious effort to reverse the trend of loss of green space. London’s residential gardens offer an opportunity to increase biodiversity by making small adaptions to turn them into a habitat for wildlife. Altering these spaces to accommodate nature could significantly contribute to London fulfilling its aims as a ‘National Park City’.
What we did and why
This research aims to investigate rewilding behaviours in relation to changes to private gardens within Greater London to improve biodiversity. This research will synthesise the existing literature on intent-orientated urban rewilding; conduct mixed methods research including interviews and a quantitative survey to understand the capability, opportunity and motivational factors influencing urban rewilding behaviour; and develop an intervention strategy to change behaviour in relation to adaptations to urban private gardens.
Our study’s contribution
With urbanisation increasing coupled with a worrying trend in the reduction of vegetated green spaces in London, facilitating behaviour change in the rewilding of London’s private gardens is important to support biodiversity; this research project contributes to this important topic.
Impacts for city policy and practice
The results of this research will allow urban leaders, local and regional, to identify approaches to improve the rewilding of urban private gardens to improve biodiversity. In London, altering such spaces to accommodate nature could significantly contribute to London fulfilling its aims as a National Park City.
Further information
Rewild My Street providing guidance for people wishing to adapt their homes, gardens and streets to encourage wildlife.
Full research article:
A study protocol to understand urban rewilding behaviour in relation to adaptations to private gardens by Justin Webb & Siân Moxon. City Know-how editor: Marcus Grant.
Related posts
Improper solid waste management causes significant environmental damage. In India, solid waste management is a major challenge, particularly for urban local bodies. While larger cities have access to sufficient funds to provide solid waste management services, smaller cities with limited resources struggle to sustain financially viable solid waste management operations. Consequently, solid waste often ends up in landfills, contaminating the environment instead of being processed effectively. At the same time, the excessive use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture degrades soil health and further contaminates the environment.
Walking is one of the simplest ways to support health, but people only walk when streets feel comfortable, safe, and attractive. Our study shows that small design choices at the street level can strongly shape walkability, and that immersive virtual reality can help cities test these choices before making expensive changes.
Public open spaces (e.g., parks, sports fields) are important for people to be physically active. However, previous studies, mostly conducted in Western countries, show that people are predominantly sedentary in such spaces. We found that public open space users were more active in Asia, suggesting a potential contribution of such spaces to people’s health.
