Wild Ways - Stage 4

This research will investigate behaviour change strategies to encourage Londoners to ‘rewild’ their gardens to improve biodiversity. The research forms the final stage, Stage 4, of the Wild Ways study, which evolved from the award-winning, design-led Rewild My Street urban-rewilding campaign. The Wild Ways study’s overarching research question is: What are the capabilities, opportunities and motivations of London residents to rewild their gardens, and how can these be used to influence their rewilding behaviour? Stage 4 will investigate this alongside two sub-questions arising from Stages 1-3: How should rewilding be defined in urban gardens? and How can behaviour-change strategies drive change in more-than-human design? Urban rewilding is vital to help address the global ecological crisis in a time of increasing urbanisation. With rural land management driving alarming biodiversity loss, cities are an important refuge for many species. Greening cities also improves climate-change mitigation, air quality and human wellbeing. Gardens cover a quarter of London and can provide substantial wildlife habitat. But trends in residents replacing greenery with hard surfaces mean the capital loses the equivalent of 2.5 Hyde Parks of greenspace annually, reducing biodiversity. Changing resident behaviour is therefore critical to achieving the Mayor of London’s targets to increase the capital’s greenspace and to justify its status as a National Park City. The interdisciplinary Wild Ways study combines architectural design research with behavioural science. It aims to understand and influence urban-rewilding behaviour in London’s private residential gardens, to reverse their contribution to biodiversity decline. Wild Ways was inspired by the research associate's Rewild My Street project: a practice-based campaign to inspire and enable urban residents to transform their outdoor spaces for wildlife. The campaign won London National Park City’s international design-ideas competition. It uses design research to develop and communicate visions for biodiverse cities - and incite community action to effect change. Architectural ‘vision’ drawings and guidance form a web-based design toolkit showing how a typical London residential street could be adapted to maximise biodiversity, empowering residents to carry out small actions that will have a cumulative effect across cities. The AHRC funding will support the concluding Stage 4 of the Wild Ways study: the implementation and testing of an intervention strategy to promote rewilding by London residents in their gardens. The intervention strategy is being co-created with Londoners in the in-progress Stage 3 of the study: focus-group workshops held with residents are being analysed with stakeholders, guided by the ‘Behaviour Change Wheel’ framework (Mitchie et al., 2011). It has been informed by completed Stages 1-2 of the study, comprising a review of global literature on understanding and influencing urban-rewilding behaviour in gardens; and surveys of Londoners on rewilding activity in their gardens. The intervention will be pilot-tested through Rewild My Street, as a model for other urban-rewilding campaigns, alongside a feasibility study to test additional, wider intervention approaches emerging from Stage 3. With AHRC input Stage 4’s scope will expand to cover the new sub-questions emerging from Stages 1-3, on defining rewilding and establishing the role of more-than-human design in making it work. It will enable engagement with the many stakeholders identified in Stages 1-3 as having the potential to influence urban-rewilding behaviour, to broaden implementation beyond Rewild My Street, generate case studies and guidance for practice and policy in London, and provide a scalable model for other cities.