IN-PERSON Barcelona Livable Cities. Section A

Abstract

Urban ‘rewilding’ is vital for the creation of livable cities, given urban nature’s contribution to citizens’ wellbeing and cities’ climate-change resilience. Rewilding private gardens would make city residents’ own homes healthy places while contributing significantly to city-scale greenspace and biodiversity, but residents’ behaviour is impairing this potential. The interdisciplinary Wild Ways study combines behavioural-science and design research to explore urban rewilding of private gardens in the UK capital, London, where gardens’ habitat value is declining through residents removing greenery. The paper presents findings from the study’s third stage: co-creating an intervention strategy with residents for increasing rewilding behaviour in London’s gardens. It then reveals early findings from the fourth stage: pilot testing the intervention strategy through the existing ‘Rewild My Street’ campaign. The strategy is guided by the ‘Behaviour Change Wheel’ framework, which suggests intervention functions and policy categories stemming from the ‘COM-B’ behaviour model and was used to identify capability, opportunity and motivation factors for Londoners engaging in rewilding activity in their gardens. The results have implications for practice and policy aimed at influencing urban rewilding in London’s gardens; and the study could be replicated in other cities worldwide. This will help designers, policymakers and campaigners employ behaviour-change strategies to encourage urban rewilding among residents