Rewilding in Built Environments

This project explores the natural, passive plant, animal, etc. rewilding of undermanaged, deteriorating, or abandoned built environments, such as buildings, roads, parking lots, railroads, and construction sites. Photos of spontaneous vegetation and rewilding on built structures in any environments, including actively used or managed ones, can also be added. Since rewilding is common in cities, some photos show the interactions or interface between societies and natural rewilding, such as plants growing among structures, left behind human objects or markings, or signs of human reuse of the habitats, and some photos explore the environments as human habitats.

You can add contextual details or additional photos of the habitats in your Observations Notes. See Terms for further details on which observations to add to this project. The observations of partly or entirely abandoned built environments are also reminiscent of depictions of what the world would look like without humans, such as Life After People (History Channel) and additional series. Those depictions are interesting in showing that built environments, which are often depicted as inhospitable to wildlife, could in principle be entirely reinhabitated with plant and animal wildlife, analogous to plants growing on rocks.

Natural rewilding can benefit ecosystems or societies in some ways and is sometimes intentionally allowed to occur for ecological restoration. It can also spread common or invasive species, be considered urban blight, damage infrastructure, or be a result of societal poverty. In addition to passive rewilding, many cities are increasingly engaging in planned or controlled rewilding, urban greenspace, urban ecology, or city sustainability projects, which help improve cities. This project shares overlap with additional restoration and urban ecology-related projects, although is also unique in the specific focus.

Alternative project titles: Rewilding Ruins, Ruins Ecology, Rubble Ecology less ↑