Urban Rewilding Examples: How Cities Can Bring Nature Back
“Rewilding” is one of those sexy ideas you’ll hear about in a long list of climate solutions.
I first came across it when I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s science fiction novel, The Ministry For The Future, where he envisions a time in the future where we (finally) act with urgency to avoid complete climate devastation.
In a few chapters, he brings up the concept of “rewilding.”
Rewilding is the practice of restoring ecosystems to their natural, wild state by removing human infrastructure and reintroducing native species. It’s essentially giving land back to nature, letting it heal and function with limited human management.
In Robinson’s book, the narrator of the rewilding chapters is somebody from town that has accepted a relocation buyout from the government. The entire town would become part of a conservation corridor. The humans would leave, and the native plants and wild animals would be reintroduced and their habitats restored.
(Note: many “rewilding” proposals do involve human intervention in some respect. Sometimes it’s alongside efforts to return land to indigenous groups whose lifestyles evolved along with the ecosystems. Other times, it’s for park rangers to manage and maintain the wildlife as necessary. But the main idea is that modern development doesn’t go well with habitat restoration.)
But urban areas are, by definition, places where a lot of people live. We are not going to “rewild” cities in the same way many are imagining we will rewild suburban and rural areas.
For many reasons that are out of the scope of this article, we’re going to depend on our cities more and more in the future. We’ll need our cities to be thriving with both humans and the natural wildlife, not one or the other.
Urban Rewilding Is a Hot Term, But The Definition Rests on Our Creativity
I like the concept a lot. When working in various environmental spaces in New York City, I use the term.
A few days ago, I was giving a tour of the community garden where I steward, and spoke about the concept of “urban rewilding,” of making parts of our garden more like the natural, wild environment.
Some people call this “micro rewilding.” The idea here is that snapshots of natural habitats can exist even within the broader context of a city.
I think we’re on the same page with the overall concept. The definition will continue to shift as we use it. Here in this article, I simply offer my ideas and some inspiration for what “urban rewilding” can look like.
I’ve drawn from several examples throughout New York City, but these concepts apply to all cities, and really, all developed areas.
My Definition Part 1: Pockets of Wildlife + Restoration Within Cities
Right now, in our community garden, two species of milkweed are popping up in several areas. We are making a point to let them thrive. On these milkweeds, butterflies will be able to lay eggs that hatch into caterpillars.
It’s small, but it is what “urban rewilding” looks like.
My Definition Part 2: Returning Developed Land to Green Space
In cities, this happens on a micro scale. We can’t establish millions of acres, of course. Our efforts are on the scale of square feet and acres. We need to identify land that could be converted into green spaces.
- Parking lots
- Road diets
- Industrial zones
We need to tear up concrete and give it back to the earth.
As I wrote about in a recent newsletter, this means fighting against car dependency, because car infrastructure takes up so much public land.
Benefits of Urban Rewilding
Rewilding usually talks about creating habitats for wildlife, as well as reintroducing that wildlife.
But in cities, rewilding comes with many other benefits.
It’s about creating habitats for wildlife, and how this provides essential services for us.
Combat Urban Heat Island
Cities are significantly hotter than surrounding rural areas due to concrete and asphalt absorbing and radiating heat.
Trees and green spaces provide cooling through shade and evapotranspiration, where plants release water vapor that naturally cools the air. Green spaces are as powerful as air conditioning.
Manage Stormwater Runoff
When rain hits concrete and asphalt, it has nowhere to go except into overwhelmed storm drains and sewers. Green spaces act like giant sponges, absorbing rainwater and allowing it to slowly filter into the ground rather than rushing into streets and basements.
In many older cities like New York, heavy rains cause combined sewer systems to overflow, sending raw sewage into waterways (yuck). Green infrastructure helps prevent these dangerous overflows by reducing the volume of water entering the system.
They help us prepare both for major storms and everyday rainfall.
Physical + Mental Health Benefits
Access to green spaces encourages physical activity like walking, jogging, and outdoor recreation, while also providing proven mental health benefits, including reduced stress, anxiety, and depression.
Urban rewilding creates more of these spaces closer to where people live.
Improve Air Quality
A single large tree can absorb 40+ pounds of CO2 per year and filter thousands of gallons of air daily. Dense urban vegetation can significantly reduce air pollution levels, particularly important in cities where traffic and industrial activity create health hazards.
Urban rewilding also replaces polluting infrastructure with green space. It’s a two-for-one.
Urban rewilding addresses multiple urban challenges simultaneously.
The Scale Spectrum: From Rooftops to Neighborhoods
Urban rewilding operates across a fascinating spectrum of scales.
I’m a believer that the little things are the big things. To me, a handful of milkweed constitutes a micro version of urban rewilding.
It could be a building’s green roof that focuses on pollinator habitats. (Although I have my objections to relying too much on rooftop space to save us.)
At the neighborhood scale, urban rewilding can involve converting abandoned lots into prairie patches, creating pollinator corridors along streets, or daylighting buried streams (more on this in a bit).
The largest urban rewilding projects might restore entire watersheds or create urban forests that span multiple neighborhoods. Each scale has its place, and together they create a network of habitat and ecosystem services throughout the city.
Working with Nature, Not Against It
We should collaborate with nature, not control it.
In traditional urban landscaping, we fight against the plants and animals that want to live in our cities. We spray herbicides on “weeds,” remove “volunteer” trees, and maintain sterile lawns that provide little ecological value.
Urban rewilding flips this approach. It means recognizing and supporting the wild processes that are already trying to happen in cities.
Urban rewilding is about learning to see the potential for wildness that already exists and helping it flourish.
Example of Urban Rewilding: Randall’s Island Park Wetland
When I first biked through Randall’s Island, I paused at a sign spoke about a restored wetland. I walked through the nature path to the sounds of birds, the sights of ducks, and the feeling that I was no longer in New York City.
This restored wetland manages stormwater from higher areas of the island, including roads and sports fields, with native plants naturally filtering the water to remove pollutants before it flows into surrounding waterways.
What makes this project particularly compelling is how it transforms a basic infrastructure need, stormwater management, into a thriving ecosystem. The wetland has become a vital breeding ground for wildlife, where you can observe the complete life cycle of dragonflies and damselflies in the calm waters.
Example of Urban Rewilding: Wildflower Meadows
Many parks throughout New York are adding more native pollinator flowers. They provide a key habitat for bees and butterflies. In New York, many native bee species are endangered in large part due to the habitat destruction.
In some cases, like Randall’s Island, you’ll see entire meadows complete with flowers and grasses.
What’s remarkable about this project is how it demonstrates the power of native plant communities to support wildlife in urban environments. Rather than maintaining resource-intensive turf grass, these meadows provide habitat, sequester carbon, and create beautiful spaces for recreation—all while requiring minimal maintenance once established. It’s a perfect example of working with natural processes rather than against them.
This may not look like “rewilding,” but to a bee, it sure is.
Example of Urban Rewilding: Tibbetts Brook, Bronx (Daylighting)
The Tibbetts Brook daylighting project represents one of the most ambitious examples of urban rewilding in New York City.
For over a century, parts of this natural stream have been buried underground, but the city is now working to restore sections of the brook to daylight, removing the concrete and pavement that have covered it.
This project tackles multiple urban challenges simultaneously. Tibbetts Brook currently dumps 4 to 5 million gallons of clean water per day into the city’s sewer system—that’s 2.1 billion gallons per year that gets unnecessarily treated.
During heavy rains, this clean brook water combines with stormwater and sewage, causing combined sewer overflows that dump raw sewage directly into the Harlem River.
By daylighting the stream, the city will remove this clean water from the sewer system entirely, reducing the burden on wastewater treatment facilities and significantly decreasing harmful overflows into the Harlem River.
The project may also help reduce flooding along Broadway and other areas of the Tibbetts Brook watershed.
What makes this project particularly exciting is its scale and vision. The stream begins in Yonkers, flows through Van Cortlandt Park into Van Cortlandt Lake, and continues southwest to the Harlem River Ship Canal, encompassing a watershed of nearly 850 acres.
Restoring this natural drainage pattern will create a continuous green corridor through the Bronx, providing habitat for wildlife while solving real infrastructure problems.
Another great example of urban rewilding, which also makes a great day trip, is the Bronx River Greenway.
Imagining the Future of Urban Rewilding
These examples from New York City represent just the beginning of what’s possible when we start thinking creatively about urban rewilding.
The beauty of this movement is that we’re still defining what it means, still discovering what works, still imagining new possibilities for how cities can integrate with nature rather than dominate it.
Here are some other things it could mean:
- More “wild” spaces in our parks
- Cutting back on pesticide use
- Only taking out weeds when it’s necessary, and being clear on what a “weed” is.
- Imagining new housing that’s integrated with wildlife, or adapting old housing to this
I don’t know. These are just ideas.
In Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown writes: “We are living now inside the imagination of people who thought economic disparity and environmental destruction were acceptable costs for their power. It is our right and responsibility to write ourselves into the future. All organizing is science fiction. If you are shaping the future, you are a futurist.”
This perfectly captures the potential of urban rewilding. We’re reimagining what cities can be. We’re writing a different story about how humans and nature can coexist in dense urban environments.
What if every vacant lot became a community-stewarded prairie? What if rooftops across entire neighborhoods were transformed into connected habitat corridors? What if we daylighted streams throughout our cities, creating blue-green networks that manage stormwater while providing recreation and wildlife habitat? What if parking lots gave way to food forests where communities could gather, learn, and feed themselves?
Urban rewilding is still being invented. It’s being created by community gardeners in the Bronx, by city planners envisioning daylighted streams, by neighbors who choose to plant native wildflowers instead of grass. It’s being shaped by everyone who looks at their city and imagines it wilder, more resilient, more alive.
The future of our cities depends on our ability to think beyond the concrete and asphalt. Urban rewilding gives us a framework for that imagination.
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