IN-PERSON London. Section A

Abstract

Urban ‘rewilding’ is vital for the creation of liveable cities, given urban nature’s contribution to citizens’ wellbeing and cities’ climate-change resilience. Rewilding private gardens would bring these benefits to citizens’ doorsteps while contributing significantly to city-scale greenspace and biodiversity, but residents’ behaviour is impairing this potential. The cross-disciplinary Wild Ways study is applying behavioural-science methodologies to 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 summarises findings from the study’s first two stages: a scoping review of global literature on understanding and influencing rewilding behaviour in urban residential gardens; and mixed-methods research, through interviews and a qualitative survey of London residents on their rewilding behaviour. It will then reveal early findings from the third stage: co-creating an intervention strategy with residents for increasing rewilding behaviour in the capital’s gardens. The strategy is guided by the ‘Behaviour Change Wheel’ framework, which suggests intervention functions and policy categories stemming from the ‘COM-B’ behaviour model, which was used to identify capability, opportunity and motivation factors for London residents 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, providing the urban nature needed to create liveable cities.