Urban Wilderness: Nature and the Potential in the Urban Cracks

Abstract

Urban wilderness is the remnant nature existing within the cracks of urban context, which can provide habitats for wildlife and natural recreation areas, with significance in optimizing urban ecological resilience. On the one hand, the unprecedented urbanization processes and the public’s negative hypotheses on the concept have caused continuous reduction of urban wilderness; on the other hand, opportunities are seen in reconstructing and activating urban wilderness when natural processes return to dominate the idle lands resulting from industrial recession and urban shrinkage, and the rewilding concept and techniques develop gradually. With ecological civilization construction, the initiative of a systematic management of the mountains, waters, forests, farmlands, lakes, and grasslands, and the advance of adopting Nature-Based Solutions in China, it is the best time to acknowledge urban wilderness in depth, identify its connotations and values, construct identity recognition, and carry out practices of conservation and restoration.

Keywords

Urban Wilderness / Ecological Opportunity / Ecological Civilization / Rewilding / Nature-Based Solutions

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2021 Higher Education Press