Wilding The Future City

W ILDING THE FUTU RE CI TY: How can rewilding inform new attitudes towards nature in our towns and cities; can urban life be rewilded and people’s connection to sublime wilderness be refreshed and renewed?

Landscape Architecture Masters Thesis AD7660 University of Gloucestershire

Catherine E. L. Thomas August 2017

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CONTENTS Introduction

p.4

Chapter 1. Wilderness

p.9

Chapter 2. Urban Wilding

p.25

Chapter 3. Wild Swindon

p.39

Conclusion

p.54

Endnotes

p.59

Bibliography

p.62

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“Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness,-to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature.

We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp,-tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.�

Henry David Thoreau Walden (1999, pp.282-3)

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INTRODUCTION This thesis will examine the meaning of wilderness, and its significance in modern day Britain. Rather than a simple analysis of the topographical characteristics of wilderness, I will seek to define its meaning on a spiritual level, so as to examine the qualities which may transfer to contemporary society. Understanding wilderness is essential to understanding the gravitas of rewilding; a nature conservation movement that has grown in popularity considerably in the last decade. By exploring its core qualities and processes, I aim to devise a new form of rewilding: urban. An alternative future landscape strategy for British towns and cities will emerge.

Unlike current, more passive policies such as the green belt, an urban wilding strategy will re-engage an urban population with its landscape, encourage people to form a more meaningful (or more visceral) relationship to the wild, and give British nature teeth once again.

I lived in Swindon for five years, but only recently did I feel I had started to discover the real place. During a series of summer walks in 2015 along canalised and half-forgotten streams, I decided to jump across the constricted Hreod Burna tributary, through stinging nettles into a fragment of the wild that I now know to be an overgrown storm drain. Penned in by housing and dual carriageway, the space is barely two hectares in area. The drone of the A4311 was close, but as I pushed past twisted hawthorn I caught a flash of ginger red - a fox darting into the thick grassy wall that confronted me. I realised that this was a place where natural process ruled, where I could just be another traversing animal. Was this wilderness? As if to try to persuade me so, walking a few steps more into a slight clearing the place revealed the lower part of a jaw bone (almost waiting for discovery) laying in the grass. I later identified its grey craggy molars and pointed beak-like end as a roe deer. I rode the unexpected awe of the encounter with this place

for days afterward, and I wondered: how many other people had discovered it? I wanted to tell everyone about it - but I also wanted it to remain mine, the fox and the deer’s secret. Since then I have been preoccupied with the potential for wilderness in the city: what can it mean? What is its purpose? Should it be celebrated? And if so, how could such places ever retain their wild nature? At the same time I was reading George Monbiot’s Feral, and decided that in order to rewild human life, I needed to explore this potential of wilderness in the city.

This thesis’ main terms, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (2017): Brownfield: noun orig. U.S. to designate an (urban) area, which is or has formerly been the site of commercial or industrial activity, esp. one now cleared and available for redevelopment.

Countryside: noun The rural part or parts of a country or region; the land and scenery of such an area.

Greenfield: adjective Designating or relating to a previously undeveloped site used for commercial development or exploitation; (of land) not previously built on.

Landscape: noun A tract of land with its distinguishing characteristics and features, esp. considered as a product of modifying or shaping processes and agents (usually natural).

Nature: noun The phenomena of the physical world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations.

Rewild: verb To return (land) to a wilder and more natural

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state. Used esp. with reference to the reintroduction of (large) mammals of or similar to species that were exterminated locally at some earlier period.

Urban: adjective Relating to, situated or occurring in, or characteristic of, a town or city, esp. as opposed to the countryside.

Wild: adjective Of an animal: Living in a state of nature; not tame, not domesticated. Of a plant (or flower): Growing in a state of nature; not cultivated.

Wilderness: noun (with article or other defining word) A wild or uncultivated region or tract of land, uninhabited, or inhabited only by wild animals; ‘a tract of solitude and savageness’ (Johnson) - explored more fully in chapter one.

Wildness: noun The quality or condition of being wild, in various senses - explored more fully in chapter one.

In order to understand the full meaning of wilderness in western civilisation, I have chosen texts from several different time periods and geographies. Some of the most defining here have been Walden

by Thoreau written in 1854, The Trouble With Wilderness by William Cronon first published in 1995, and Edgelands by Marion Shoard written in 2002. As well as a solid background in romantic wilderness, the texts opened up the key arguments for and against different visions of the wild, and the contemporary alternatives.

Several other texts, particularly histories of ecocriticism, have further enriched my research on wilderness.

Monbiot’s 2014 book Feral was the foundation for my interest in rewilding, and much like Walden documents the author’s personal journey to wild nature. Peter Taylor’s Beyond Conservation follows a similar pattern of epiphany and spiritual journey; I also found the text invaluable for its numerous case studies and practical directions

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for rewilding networks. Edmund Burke’s 1757 text A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful has been fundamental in explaining my own emotions around rewilding, as well as the familiar pattern of personal and spiritual journeys in those other key research texts.

Whilst the discourse on rewilding has progressed and its popularity grown, the main texts are generally concerned with uninhabited or very sparsely habited landscape, such as upland or moorland.

This thesis will investigate the key benefits of rewilding and suggest where transferable characteristics can input to urban landscapes, always with a view to rewild human life.

This thesis is structured in three chapters. The first serves as a background, as it documents my investigation into the meaning of wilderness, particularly focusing on what the term means in Britain both historically and contemporarily. It also explores the term rewilding and how it is related to wilderness, and concludes with my own method of recording the wildness of a place. The second chapter explores what rewilding in an urban setting could mean, and its possible impact on people’s lives; concluding with a series of design codes that give practical directions for urban wilding.

The third chapter looks in detail at Swindon as a settlement where urban wilding could take place, and how it might develop over time.

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1.

WILDERNESS Degged with dew, dappled with dew Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through, Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern, And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Manley Hopkins Inversnaid

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A HISTORY OF WILDERNESS

the beautiful and the sublime (1757) encapsulate perhaps the most enduring theories behind a movement which influenced philosophy and the arts for generations. Burke divides the two as follows:

Wilderness’ history is complex and its meaning rich.

Beautiful

Sublime

Medieval and early modern Judeo-Christian attitudes to wilderness are encapsulated in the King James bible (Cronon, 2015, p.103): wilderness is often pictured as where Satan resides - a place to be spiritually tested, but also a place of escape and a potential salvation.

Whilst wilderness does not embody freedom itself, it suggests the path towards freedom and salvation. A dualism of wilderness is evident: it embodies terror, but allows for more positive feelings if approached the correct way. The very act of experiencing terror is a test of one’s religious strength, however by conquering it, one is elevated to the position of figures such as Moses - who led the Israelites from Egypt for decades through the wilderness (Garrard, 2004, p.61). This dualism of feeling perpetuates throughout the history of wilderness.

Small

Vast

Smooth and polished

Rugged and negligent

“...shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly...”

(1757, p.206)

“...loves the right line...when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation...” (1757, p.206)

Not obscure

Dark and gloomy

Light and delicate

Solid and massive

Founded on pleasure

Founded on pain

When considering the history of wilderness, and gaining a thorough understanding of it in contemporary society, a reflection on the sublime is illuminating. Burke’s exploration of the aesthetics of

He writes passionately about the core meaning of the sublime, describing it as “the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling” (1757, p.110), far stronger than any emotion linked to pleasure. To me, the clearest part of his definition is that the sublime is the only emotion to fill the mind entirely, blocking all others. Burke suggests fear, wonder and astonishment all as high forms of the sublime, perfectly encapsulating the dual positive and negative connotations of the sublime. As Burke explores the causes of the sublime further, he draws infinity, power and magnificence into its meaning - all emotions that fill the mind. His description of magnificence using the example of a starry night is particularly appealing, where “the apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence” (1757, p.154). Characteristics that may be associated with everyday human life – such as care - are rejected from the experience of the sublime. It is clearly Other from humanity, stemming from a higher power.

Burke explains that the purest forms of the sublime are to be found in nature. When evaluating how the sublime is triggered through very subtle variations in power, he continues to draw a distinction between humanity and wilderness. Despite its brute power, he describes a bull as only able to inspire the sublime when it is feral and acting apart from its usual purpose of a domestic animal. Burke instead finds the sublime in powerful wild creatures: “[the sublime] comes upon us in the gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the form of the lion, the tiger” (1757, p.140) and so the distinction is that the lion, and not the bull, lies outside of human control.

Figure 1: ‘El Capitan’ (1952) by Ansel Adams, known for his photographs of American wilderness (The Ansel Adams Gallery, 2016)

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I would argue that the sublime is still a fundamental part of perceived wilderness today. Vastness, power and magnificence are often key characteristics of designated wild places - as one can see from Figure 2, Rewilding Britain’s project work imagery focuses on long-range and vast views of rugged topography and big skies.

The associated feelings of awe and wonder are extremely useful

when exploring the wellbeing benefits of the wild - emotions that urban people often strive for - however one must be careful that not everywhere with a mountain, forest, cliff and big sky piggy-backs on these positive aspects of wilderness.

Because wilderness is so often associated with vast landscapes with little human activity, it is often seen as a New World concept 1. This new, now familiar vision of the wild can be seen as a unity of two philosophies. The first was the American sublime, which developed through the transatlantic romantic movement; the second American frontierism, closely related to the European movement of primitivism. A picture emerged of vast, wide landscapes, often with “God’s-eye views” (Cronon, 2015, p.115) from mountain tops, canyons, and ledges. An extract from Thoreau’s Walden, written in 1854, epitomises this New World wilderness: “We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks” (1999, p.282)

Figure 2: The Rewilding Britain website, projects page (Rewilding Britain, 2017a).

Writers like Thoreau chose to escape into wilderness to feel better connected to an almighty power, the religious nature of wilderness again prevailing. Wildlands could afford this connection because of their ability to make one feel small and mortal. The consistent reaction to these wild places from their new proponents was a sense of wonder that filled the mind, and hence they are sublime.

sublime, fundamentally shifted the Western world’s perception of wild nature from terror to awe and wonder (2015, xiv). Without this monumental shift, writers such as Rachel Carson would not later have been able to fight for its protection. Therefore, much of modern day conservation has the sublime to thank for its cultural acceptance.

American wilderness writing from the 19th to early 20th century rarely suggests places totally devoid of mankind however, as is sometimes presumed. Stephen Fender (1999, xxiii) explains that although Thoreau gives the impression of a long stay battling through seasons, he only camped at Walden intermittently, also frequently staying with friends in his nearby hometown of Concord.

Walden pond is very close to the railroad, but Thoreau does not avoid writing about it, “the whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods...sounding like the scream of a hawk” (1999, p.106). Thoreau freely engages with this human infrastructure, and whilst he may not describe it positively, his hawk simile incorporates this very human element within the realms of his sacred wild Walden 2.

With the adoption of the US Wilderness Act in 1964, wilderness was defined as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man” (cited in Jørgensen, 2015, p.483): a vision of human-free wilderness emerged. This divorce of humanity from nature continued as US National Parks were designated in the 20th century, and the eviction of many native populations demonstrates the totality of the divorce and the European perception that native people were damaging the wilderness, rather than forming a part of the ecosystem itself. Native American people such as the Crow and the Blackfeet (U.S. National Park Service, 2017), who had once used the lands within Yellowstone National Park to traverse and hunt, were barred. The divorce spread globally, with other native populations being removed from designated wildlands, such as the Ikoma’s removal from Serengeti National Park by the British in 1951 (Poole, 2006) 3.

A characteristic of the pond that Thoreau frequently returns to is its permanence, unchanging and distinct from just one society, “successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as ever” (1999, p.162). In Thoreau’s vision of wilderness, man is not excluded; instead it is the ancient quality of the relationship that justifies man being present.

Ken Hiltner concludes that Thoreau, and his counterparts in the

Through the 20th century, the paradox of wilderness cemented itself: wilderness could only really exist outside of humanity’s contaminating influence, yet humanity’s “most authentic experience” (Garrard, 2004, p.71) could only be found out in the wild. The picture of wilderness that Thoreau originally wrote about - which had a definite human element - was conveniently forgotten, and perhaps

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c.4,500 BCE first agricultural practices come to Britain.

c.1618 CE Dutch engineers helped the English begin to drain the Somerset levels, releasing more land for farming.

c.4,300-3,250 BCE large decline in Elm trees. c.12,000 BCE the main body of Britain’s last glacier retreats c.8,000 BCE the last of the glacier retreats from the Scottish Highlands. c.5,000 BCE Large scale forest clearance, particularly in East Anglia, Dartmoor and the North Yorkshire Moors.

12,00 BCE

c.6,000 BCE wolverine (Gulo gulo) extirpated (probably hunted to extinction).

c.3,500 - 3,300 BCE agricultural communtities began to group and permanaently settle in the most productive areas, such as Wessex, Essex, Yorkshire and east Scotland. c.3,500 - 3,300 BCE evidence of reforestation in some areas, such as the Somerset levels.

c.600 CE peasants in the north began to use a new form of plough, with a deeper cut but requiring more oxen. peasants began to group together in larger farms rather than work in small, family groups.

(Gold and Revill, 2004, p.84)

2,500-800 BCE

800 BCE - 43 CE 43-410 CE

Bronze Age

Iron Age

c.3,250 BCE aurochs (Bos primigenius) extirpated through hunting. c.1,900 BCE elk (Alces alces) extirpated through hunting.

1086 CE the Domesday book records wildwood covering approximately 15% of the land.

c.600-1000 CE

Roman Britain Rationalism c.500 CE lynx (Lynx lynx) extirpated through hunting. c.500 CE brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) extirpated through hunting.

c.1630 CE the Fens begin to be drained.

1066 CE the Norman kings ordered Royal Forests be created - not forests in the modern day sense, but reserves anywhere hunting stock lived, set aside for royal hunting.

1450-1650

1650-1800

1770-1830

Renaissance

Enlightenment

Industrial Revolution

1260 CE wild boar (Sus scrofa) extirpated through hunting, the last individuals present in the Forest of Dean.

1610 CE grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) last observed in British seas.

1416 CE white stork (Ciconia ciconia) extirpated through hunting and loss of habitat.

1526 CE beaver (Castor fiber) extirpated through hunting.

1542 CE common crane (Grus grus) extirpated through hunting and loss of habitat.

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1660 CE the restoration of the monarchy with Charles II saw many large estates ‘entailed’, meaning they could not be broken up easily. This changed landowner’s attitudes to their land, and they often turned more of it over to agriculture.

c.1621 CE grey wolf (Canis lupis) extirpated through hunting and persecution c.1650 CE spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia) extirpated through hunting and loss of habitat.

1940 The use of synthetic pesticides (such as DDT) boomed, seen as effective because it was inexpensive and appeared to be non-toxic to most mammals.

1968 The Countryside Act was enacted.

Organisations such as the Forestry Commission began to diversify their operations to include leisure and recreation, as well as production.

1895 The National Trust was formed 1912 The Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (later to become the Wildlife Trusts) established

1951 The first UK National Parks are designated.

1919 Forestry Commission set up with a view to replant woodlands and forest following heavy depletion during WWI.

1837-1902

1914-1918

1939-1945

Victorian Britain

WWI

WWII

c.1850 CE european sturgeon (Acipenser sturio) extirpated through overfishing and loss of habitat c.1890 CE goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) extirpated through persecution and loss of habitat.

1916 CE white tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) extirpated through hunting and persecution 1916 CE osprey (Pandion haliaetus) extirpated through hunting and persecution

1962 Rachel Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’ brought the misuse of pesticides into public knowledge across the world

1969 Dutch elm disease reaches the UK from the USA and quickly spreads northwards. Over 60 million british elms die, redefining the UK’s hedgerows and woodland.

c.1965 Many of the Forestry Commission’s original conifer plantations reached maturity; they became unpopular with the public.

1960

1954 osprey (Pandion haliaetus) reintroduced itself to Scotland

c.1960 goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) reintroduced accidentally by escapes from falconers

1980 The Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country - the first urban wildlife trust - is established, quickly followed by three further urban trusts, Avon, London and Sheffield

1989 Trees for Life is set up, with the aim to restore the Caledonian Forest.

1973 Richard Mabey’s book ‘The Unofficial Countryside’ became one of the first to introduce the idea of city brownfield sites being rich in nature.

1970

2009 Trees for Life purchase the 10,000 acre Dundreggan Estate and begin a rewilding programme through tree planting

1990

1975 white tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla) reintroduced to the Isle of Rum 1979 common crane (Grus grus) reestablishes itself in a breeding colony in the Norfolk Broads

2010

2009 beaver (Castor fiber) reintroduced to the Knapdale Forest 2010 spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia) re-established itself in a breeding colony in Norfolk

c.1990 CE farmed wild boar (Sus scrofa) escape and form feral populations in the south of England

2015 beaver (Castor fiber) reintroduced to the River Otter in Devon

c.2006 beaver (Castor fiber) illegally reintroduced to the River Tay in Scotland

Figure 3: A timeline of British wilderness.

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understandably so for a conservation community reacting strongly to the ever-growing influence of humanity on nature. The late 20th century saw a realisation of how human endeavours - the use of fossil fuels, deforestation, and intensified agriculture (to name but a few) - impacted negatively on natural process and biodiversity; however, it also saw the continuing rise of such practices due to economic and social dependence upon them. The continuing rise of global populations (particularly urban) and the birth of the digital age also suggests a further divorce of humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom. As Roderick Fraser Nash wrote: “A society must become technological, urban and crowded before a need for wild nature makes economic and intellectual sense” (2001, p.343).

Perhaps the pinnacle of ecocentric thought - that wild nature is only possible completely outside of humanity - came with Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature in 1990, and his belief that due to human-led global climate change, nature no longer existed (Garrard, 2004, p.70). However, by suggesting that wild nature can only truly exist on a large, uninterrupted and global scale, the limits of such an ecocentric view are betrayed. McKibben’s view has no allowance for the type of wild that can be appreciated on an intimate and smallscale, such as Thoreau’s experience of Walden pond.

American environmental historian William Cronon has been key in challenging the view that wilderness must be people-less, arguing that ecocentric wilderness leads to a dangerous attitude of nature vs. humanity, potentially disastrous for nature conservation.

Cronon’s view of what is truly wilderness is compelling and universal: it ranges widely from waterfall droplets falling on your face, open views across a landscape, to unexpected encounters with wild animals, “something profoundly Other than yourself... wilderness is made of that too” (2015, p.103). Cronon’s rally against an ecocentric perception of wilderness will be a crucial measure for the rewilding movement, especially if it is to gain support from communities such as those in the UK - so removed from New World wilderness. Wilderness, as a concept, has been on a long journey, but Cronon’s words demonstrate its ultimate power as an experience, rather than a place. This Other becomes a crucial element of the rewilding debate.

BRITISH WILDERNESS AND WILDNESS

A unique British attitude to wilderness (and perhaps the more appropriate term for this island, wildness) can be documented through our old Royal Forests, agricultural enclosure, and our modern urban edgelands.

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In 1086 the Domesday book shows that Britain’s once widespread wildwood had shrunk to approximately 15% of the land. A habitat that would once have held great power over Medieval peoples through fear and reverence - had become something that could be controlled, a benign “greenwood” (Gold & Revill, 2004, p.96).

Figure 3 suggests peak losses of large native fauna around the 6th century and the Renaissance period of the 15th-17th centuries 4.

However, extirpation was continuing steadily from c.5,000 BCE, with hunting and habitat loss through agricultural clearance acting swiftly on a relatively small island ecosystem. Our current natural landscape looks hushed and apologetic compared with the full native guild of herbivores and carnivores that we have lost; a “remnant fauna” (Monbiot, 2014, p.244) where many of our remaining large herbivores - deer and wild boar - have to be culled as their natural predators have been extirpated. Yet from Medieval eyes, this new and quieter landscape would have probably appeared safe and secure - progress for humanity. Would there have been any sense of loss for a 16th century peasant, whose grandparents may have told tales of beavers, spoonbill and wolves?

As an island with a long history of wildlife persecution, there is no chance of our large terrestrial fauna returning of its own accord (as lynx and wolves have been doing across the mountains of Europe).

This essential missing element of wilderness leaves even our wildest-feeling places empty.

Royal Forests were a Norman concept, created where Anglo-Saxon demesne had been sited. They were not a forest in the modern sense of the word, but a hunting ground where resources (particularly game) were controlled by law 5. They were usually a mosaic of meadows, pasture, woods “and even villages” (Anon, 1959); rather than having one distinct land use, they were defined by the boundaries in which forest law was enacted. Studying Domesday maps suggests that though heavily influenced by humans compared to their earlier wildwood conterparts, Royal Forests were often characterised by a very sparse population and a lack of permanent settlements they were often only home to small, temporary populations, and sited in areas of lower land fertility or difficult terrain, for obvious reasons. In A History of the County of Wiltshire Norman Forests are described as expanding and even pushing local populations out: “it was this extension of the forest law to lands held by subjects, a characteristic feature of the Norman forests, which aroused such deep resentment in England” (Anon, 1959). It could be possible that this resentment was deep enough to still be felt today; or at least that a cultural memory of forests being associated with private land still prevails 6.

As a powerful symbol of new Enlightenment attitudes 7, British parliamentary enclosure from 1770-1815 saw approximately 7 million acres of open heaths, commons and upland waste enclosed

(Gold & Revill, 2004, p.127). Wilderness in Britain would have shrunk substantially over this period, as these areas - before relatively free of intense human influence - suddenly came under intense human control, with regimented fenced fields, grazing, ploughing and arable. Moreover, a peasant’s perception of the places outside the village - where once one could collect firewood and glean food in times of hardship (Gold & Revill, 2004, p.128) - must have changed radically, becoming places one would be punished for entering and foraging in. As a result, attitudes to the wild could have become far less nuanced: instead of places of mystery, terror and potential bounty, wild places were replaced, extremely swiftly, by an unknown landlord. The rich pickings of wild places would have become out of reach (often within a single generation), perhaps leaving only the unfamiliar terror behind.

British national parks were first designated in the 1950s and offer perhaps the closest vision of a New World experience of wilderness: vast, majestic and sparsely habited. The National Parks UK website sells the parks as “Britain’s breathing spaces” (2017), their topography of mountains and cliffs and their chance for solitude and escape from everyday life all infused with the sublime. The popularity of the Parks as holiday destinations and the success of this marketing strategy demonstrates that the sublime is still highly beguiling to British people. This is where the sublime and wilderness must be disentangled though, as the parks are highly managed pastoral landscapes, and not ecological wilderness. When you live in a town or city yourself, it is easy to forget that sheep and cows can enforce as much human influence over a landscape as a densely built settlement 10.

The industrial revolution and romanticism saw the rebirth of wilderness as a cultural place for humans to inhabit and express themselves through - a real shift from Medieval attitudes of terror8.

Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities give a very British angle on romanticism’s desire to bring man closer to nature through God9.

His Garden Cities idea (perhaps incongruously named, as it was more a social project than a wish for gardens) suggests that the contemporary British method of connecting to nature was not through wilderness, but instead the pastoral. Figure 6 shows that agriculture, allotments and hedgerows are recurrent features of Howard’s diagram of the Garden City, with wilder places - woodland, marsh, sea - absent.

Perhaps our richest wildernesses now lay in the fringes around our settlements, the interface between townscape and pastoral - places that Shoard has coined the edgelands. They include fragmented or abandoned pasture, district retail parks, dual carriageway intersections, household waste plants, derelict industrial sites, sewage works, wasteground (2002, p.117) - places of both extreme human function and malfunction. Shoard asserts that the edgelands are the “antithesis” to our most admired, tidy and neat English landscapes, instead being “raw and rough, sombre and menacing, flaunting their participation in activities we do not wholly understand” (2002, p.121). This is where I have found modern British wilderness: it is the sense of the Other that suddenly transforms these spaces into modern-day wilderness - they just need to be read correctly. Rather than a lack of human presence (though this is certainly the case), it is the lack of human engagement with these ignored places that creates the wilderness.

However, Howard’s description of Garden City agriculture demonstrates a rich - not monotonous - farmland. This was a time before agricultural intensification, and so it is important to read his texts knowing that the farmland he describes is entirely different to the rural land that current generations see. It would have been richer in wildlife, activity, texture, colour and form, with much more marked seasonal change. The contemporary vision of Howard’s agricultural land is further supported by a John Ruskin quote included in the original 1898 edition of Garden Cities of To-morrow. It appears to give as much weight to ‘wild’ nature as cultivated countryside: “...all lovely things are also necessary;- the wildflower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only” (Ruskin, 1862, cited in Howard, 1985, p.20) If time travel were possible, it would be fascinating to measure how ‘wild’ Howard’s farmland would feel to a modern Briton - I imagine that despite still being a human-controlled landscape, the extra birdsong, increased tree and hedge cover, wildflower spread and rich texture would make a quietly wild place.

Richard Mabey’s The Unofficial Countryside from 1973 was one of the first texts to appreciate the high biodiversity of the edgelands, the most forgotten corners of which have been left for decades to build rich ecosystems outside of human control. They are described

by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts as constantly shifting, disappearing, reinventing and growing (2012, p.6), and this unpredictability also provokes a sense of wonder common to wilderness experience.

As Thoreau implies in Walden, timelessness and a link to a time outside of one’s living memory can lead to strong engagement with wilderness. Hence “away from the plough and agrochemical, the wild flowers and grasses of yesterday’s ... countryside live on” (Shoard, 2002, p.124) through its preserved seedbank and even its derelict architecture. The inherent power of natural succession is a further reminder of wilderness.

Just like wilderness, there is a duality to the edgelands. They have the potential to be joyful, playful places of discovery and education, particularly for bands of children and teenagers; but they also have a more sinister and antisocial side of burnt-out cars, fly tipping and dark deals. Yet where humanity can be found, these kinds of activities are bound to take place: and so perhaps the ‘edge’ of the

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Figure 4: Sketchbook progression of the spectrum of wildness.

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edgelands is a crucial facet of this particularly British sort of wild.

It mirrors the Medieval sense of terror which frightens some, but in turn beguiles others, and offers a sense of intrepid salvation through adventure.

Perhaps if we could loosen our ties to the topographical sublime of our National Parks, and connect better with the experiential sublime of the edgelands, British wilderness could be rediscovered and with it a more meaningful connection to wild nature.

Rather than being something that everything else depends upon, in modern Britain nature can sometimes appear to have entered the realms of hobby-ism - which some partake in, but many choose not to. Taylor describes our attitude to nature as “not necessary in modernity, other than in the services and jobs it provides” (2005, p.4). This transformation of nature into a fringe interest denies it its gravity; no wonder that our National Parks can market their wildlife-empty, human-managed places as wilderness. Cronon writes that “the state of mind that today most defines wilderness is wonder” (2015, p.116) - and here there is hope. Wilderness becomes problematic only if this ‘wonder’ is limited to vast, remote areas.

Therefore the UK, despite its apathetic urban population and depleted fauna, is in an exciting position to redefine what wilderness means. As a small and denuded, highly populated island, I argue that the large-scale, monumental, sublime landscapes of the past have little to do with wilderness. Its meaning can be shifted and played with to incorporate new urban landscapes, waste spaces and forgotten pockets; a modern British version of the wild that is small in scale, intimate, but ripe with the experience of wonder.

REWILDING AND BRITISH NATURE CONSERVATION

The term rewild puts an emphasis on restoring, returning something that was once present - but whether that is a quality, a measured ecological state, an animal or plant, is left open to interpretation if one reads the word alone.

In Feral (2014), Monbiot’s shifting baseline theory - where one generation grows up accustomed to the previous generations’ ecological wrecking, never appreciating the richness that generations before experienced - suggests a more complex reading of the word: that conservation of the wild is not enough. Creation is required; only through creation can the shifting baseline’s effects be reversed.

Dolly Jørgensen’s studies on the changing meaning of the term demonstrates a range of interpretations over a relatively short time, shifting between continents and grappling over what past state to re-wild to. She describes rewilding as confused and imprecise,

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“a word ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ - or perhaps, signifying everything” (2015, p.486). As the term has never owned a solid scientific definition, however, this journey in meaning could be seen as inevitable; I can see that the word has adopted a more spiritual meaning which approaches the rewilding of not just landscapes, but also human life. This, I believe, is the power behind the term - although vague, those unfamiliar with the field can get a sense of its broad meanings instinctively 11.

Jørgensen criticises the rewilding movement as attempting to take landscape back to a time before humans, citing Cronon’s views of the danger of “distinct units” (2015, p.487) of man and nature.

Monbiot, as one of the British movement’s chief proponents, tackles this critique head on. Alarmed at an increasingly urban population with little understanding of natural process, he calls for rewilding as a method that encourages people to reconnect with nature, through more visceral experiences of nature than the traditional small and apologetic nature reserve. I read this as the awe and wonder of the sublime.

Feral reveals the distinctly British version of rewilding as a combination of the European and north American movements.

The former’s land abandonment (particularly the uplands and subsidised farmland) is complemented by the latter’s return of missing keystone species such as the wolf and the beaver, which would alter food chains and the landscape itself. These would be landscapes where natural process leads, rather than human intervention - therefore bringing the opportunity for a more raw human experience of nature. Crucially, the idea is not to emulate a particular past biosphere, but simply to return missing animals and processes so that our wild landscapes can once more be sustainable and “self-willed” (Monbiot, 2014, p.10). Ecosystems that can confidently progress into an unspecified wild landscape.

In the case of Rewilding Britain, imagery from the organisation’s website demonstrates their focus on charismatic predator species such as the lynx, wolf and eagle (2017b). However Feral lists a wider range, including the blue stag beetle, the capercaillie, and the grey whale (2014, pp.124-135). Though an animal reintroduction and its initial management requires substantial human intervention, wild systems are not sustainable in the long-term without their correct guild of carnivores and herbivores.

This combination of new wild habitat, as well as the experience of wild predator and prey, allows for rich opportunities in enhancing human wellbeing and a more meaningful engagement in the British landscape, as expanded on in chapter two.

When considering the use of rewilding for an urban context, Taylor’s frequent use of the word wilding (in place of rewilding) is an important conscious decision (xii). Wilding recognises his focus on “habitat creation based on future-thinking rather than past state targets” (2005, p.485), again focusing on the future. Scottish

Natural Heritage also differentiates between wildland and wildness (2002, pp.1-4): whereas the former describes large and remote wild places, the latter acknowledges the potential for wildness anywhere and at any scale.

The fine semantics of the terms around rewilding are also carefully distinguished by Prior and Ward. Whilst they describe wilderness as a “quantitative spatial dimension” (2016, p.5) absent of humans, they refer to a description of wildness by Woods: “the autonomy of the more-than-human world” (2005, p.177). Because of this, and their definition of the term as free of scale and size, Jonathan Prior and Kim Ward argue that rewilding is concerned not with wilderness but wildness. It is “relational” (2016, p.6) and can therefore be applied to a multiplicity of places, forms and people. It can be seen as less homogeneous, more flexible and perhaps more inclusive than traditional wilderness creation. Its apparent flexibility, through a link to the wonder of traditional wilderness but also many other complex shades of awe and surprise, gives the rewilding movement the opportunity to connect with a wide range of humanity. As Taylor writes: “I believe it [wildness] has a far stronger appeal to the general public than species-oriented conservation can ever hope to attain” (2005, p.246). 13 As a leisure pursuit and something that only exists away from home, nature conservation precludes itself from a deeper, more meaningful, as well as an everyday connection to human life.

One of Taylor’s strongest criticisms of today’s British nature conservation is its proneness to catch the imagination of experts, rather than the broader public. He argues that the now defunct, but still influential idea of Biodiversity Action Plan species and habitats (BAP) focuses too narrowly - a certain butterfly, rodent or marsh plant - and plays to a static form of nature where wildlife can only be found in pocket reserves. Taylor describes this as “nature gardening” (2005, p.216), preferring instead a strategy that would celebrate habitats in themselves rather than species-led habitats. It could be suggested that prevailing designations such as SSSIs still embody this approach. Though charismatic species-led movements have made conservation a much more accessible topic, it could be argued that because Britain retains so few of its native charismatic species, such an approach is very limiting. It is therefore little surprise that the general public appear to connect more with those designations that appear much more relational - green belt, AONB - than quantitative. Does visiting a reserve with the intent of seeing a particular species preclude the opportunity for some unexpected encounter and the excitement of the unknown?

Taylor does not see British conservation’s current attitudes as sustainable; “if conservation...limits itself to the scientific and eco-tourist paradigm it now so strongly embraces, it surely will be sidelined in the immense conflict and bonfire of resources that now looms” (205, p.163). Rewilding, with a lower dependence on resources but with the opportunity for high pubic engagement, could hold one of the answers for a far more robust nature movement.

A SPECTRUM OF WILDNESS

Clearly wilderness and rewilding are not specific terms. The meaning of wilderness has shifted constantly over centuries and through cultures, dancing between negative and positive interpretations but always fundamentally linked with the social, scientific and artistic movements of the time. The romantic and frontier visions of wilderness still resonate strongly today, thanks to the sublime’s power in vast, sparse landscapes. My investigations have shown that the true meaning of the sublime offers more than just wide, open places however. The future of our relationship with the wild lies in wildness, a term without set scales or points in time. Here, the rewilding movement can fit perfectly.

To better understand wildness, I began to work on the notion of a spectrum of wild: it would attempt to rationalise the key and timeless elements of the idea beyond the constraints of cultural trends, particular landscapes and certain scales. These would be the fundamental characteristics of wildness. A spectrum acknowledges that there is not one perfect state of wild; instead it appears in many different forms. It takes the form of a circular spectrum, undoing the need for absolute extremes and acknowledging the term’s subjectivity. Vitally, it is through the eye of the viewer that the wild is invented: ironically, it is a human construct and must be understood in this way, created by “very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history” (Cronon, 2015, p.102). Since it cannot be used as a solid scientific term with clear parameters, the diagrams I have produced are not at an end point and will continue to evolve.

History has demonstrated a pattern of wildness with two interlinked sides: spiritual and ecological. The ecological side relates to animals, plants and their processes; the spiritual side relates to emotions associated with wilderness experiences of awe, wonder and fear.

Each can be linked to the other, and often a highly ecological wildness will encourage a highly spiritual wildness, though this is not always the case. For instance, many would experience a strong spiritual wildness in a National Park, however it would score low on an ecological scale. Conversely, a brownfield site undisturbed for twenty years will harbour many species of bird, invertebrate and lizard, but would score low on a spiritual scale because of its location in the bustle of the city.

Researching the history of wilderness, and documenting the wildness I have found in Swindon, has constantly refined my understanding of what each term constitutes. The following extract from Walden has particularly crystallised my approach toward a spectrum of wildness:

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“This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself.

As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled.

These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature’s watchmen - links which connect the days of animated life.” (1999, p.119) We can glean a rich catalogue of ideas from this extract that inform the spectrum: • Heightened sensory perception, possibly because many senses are working together at once in order to give a full picture of rich surroundings, or even as a precursor to a person’s ‘flight or fight’ mode: sight, smell, sound, touch.

• Feelings of happiness, freedom, and oneness with nature.

• The sense of a journey through time passing, as well as the freedom that walking through a natural landscape can give.

• The experience of weather, particularly inclement.

• A variety of animals - variety here is crucial as amphibians, birds and mammals are mentioned, from small in size (the bullfrog) to large (the skunk). These do not just have to be seen, but they can simply be heard - as long as their presence is known.

• The presence of trees, spoken of anthropomorphically, as if people demanding ‘sympathy’.

• Darkness signifying distance from human settlement, privacy, and the opportunity for peace but also mystery and danger.

• A sense of flux and movement - the wild is constantly changing, even in the depth of night.

• Signs or knowledge that animals are hunting - a never-ending natural process that can be read as gruesome (and that we are somewhat divorced from), but that is constant and parallel to human life.

• From this analysis it is easy to see how closely linked spiritual and animal axes might be. I developed a series of five elements, each a signal of wildness being present: tree / animal / natural process / human.

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Animal The experience of the Other means that the presence of wild animals signals a feeling of wildness - living things that lead a life independent of humanity. As Michael Hough writes: “[nature] is tolerated on our own terms, within the limits of convenience ... and aesthetic conventions. The conflicts are heightened, however, with wildlife. Animals, birds and insects are more difficult to control than plants.” (2006, p.136) It is partly the ‘nuisance’ of wildlife that could create this sense of the wild, but also the aspect of danger - that large mammals (both herbivore and carnivore) have the potential to harm humans if not respected and treated correctly. Again, Hough’s suggestion that wilderness is the place “where you could still be eaten” (2006, p.137) acknowledges our most primitive emotions as prey creatures ourselves.

When devising an animal scale, it was important to decide which creatures to include. As Monbiot argues, as the British fauna’s “size and abundance decline, so do our expectations, imperceptibly eroding to match the limitations of the present” (2014, p.244). It is this - that the animals we expect to encounter in the wild fall short of an unknown bountiful baseline - that convinced me to include those species that we have lost due to human persecution and loss of habitat. If I did not, then red deer, fox and badger would be the culmination of wild British fauna; however by including lost species such as lynx, aurochs and wolf, they are joined by a far richer guild. It is therefore impossible to score highly on my animal scale at present, though the inclusion of many of these lost species in rewilding projects suggests an encounter may be possible in the future.

Tree Forest, being the climax ecosystem which seral communities lead to, suggests that trees are a clear signal of wildness. Even a city centre street tree can embody wildness: its scale can inspire wonder; it can harbour countless other life forms and life cycles that are independent of humanity; its longevity points to timelessness that is often associated with the wild; and its growth, changing foliage and seeds hint at the independence of natural process. A pollarded willow, a delicate suburban street tree and a woodland canopy and understory will all score differently on a tree scale, however any tree’s presence can count towards the wild.

Given the importance of process in the practice of rewilding, planting copses alone will not bring wildness. Herbaceous layers, scrub and bramble are also vital in communicating the process of natural succession that is at the heart of rewilding.

Process Within the process scale sits growth and pollination, weather and water, animal processes, and human management. Whilst a purely ecological measure of natural process might put an onus on native vegetation, when measuring this wildness element I believe it is simply the uncontrollable nature of the vegetation itself that is a signal of the wild. In the edgelands for instance, Shoard describes “riotous growths of colourful plants, both native and exotic” (2002, p.117) putting the focus on the bright colour and textures of the vegetation, not its provenance. This is perhaps where it is clearest that biodiversity measures are separate to wildness measures - it is the appearance of process Other from humanity that defines wildness.

Whilst natural process - flooding, death, weeds - can be viewed as negative from humanity’s perspective, Greg Garrard’s comparison of chaotic human civilisation to “the free self-organisation of nature” (2004, p.83) demonstrates the positive aspect. There is comfort in natural process: that through natural succession, nature can effortlessly recover from destruction and survive the darkest threat, and this is where its spiritual element lies.

Process of course reaches far beyond the premise of wildness and this thesis, into universal scales of dust storms on Jupiter, water plumes on Europa and wheeling comets. This is where its power lies and why it is fundamental to wildness - it is an unstoppable force which can be presented to us in the largest, but also the most minute and subtle, of ways.

Human Sensory The raw information that our senses gather - which seem to form particular significance in texts such as Walden - seems to be crucial to a human record of wildness. By allowing for the more everyday experience of sight and sound, a balance is given to the experiential half of the dial that includes isolation and wonder.

derelict industrial plant, office parks and gypsy encampments, golf course, allotments and fragmented, frequently scruffy, farmland.” (2002, p.117)

Human Experiential Arguably anything Other than most people’s urban existence has the potential to feel wild; however there is also the great cultural weight of the sublime to consider. For instance, Thoreau always speaks positively about the solitude he experiences at Walden. The experience of the sublime is wrapped up in the enormity of nature over mankind, and so a degree of human solitude helps towards a wilderness experience.

Cronon introduces a subtle reworking of the experiential aspect when he describes his experiences of wilderness close to his home, of waterfowl on a pond, a dramatic sunset over hills, a semi-derelict farmstead: “What I celebrate about such places is not just their wildness, though that certainly is among their most important qualities; what I celebrate even more is that they remind us of the wildness in our own backyards, of the nature that is all around us if only we have eyes to see it.” (2015, pp.114-5) It is that wild nature can be experienced directly from a ‘human’ landscape that makes it so compelling. This more modern experience of wildness acknowledges that most landscapes now have a degree of human input, and acknowledges the rewilding definition - that the wild can happen at any scale, minute or large, and not just the vast landscapes of the sublime. Human activity within an ecosystem is entirely possible: “the metric is not activity, it’s the impact of the activity” (Charles, 2016).

The experiential dial is therefore highly subjective, and will vary depending on the recorder’s upbringing and cultural understanding of the wild. Yet to recognise a degree of subjectivity is essential, as wildness is primarily a human experience.

Since sensory information is experienced everywhere however, what particularly signals the wild?

• Green suggests an element of natural process and therefore an element of the wild.

• Unrecognised sounds of wild animals.

• A lack of human-created noise, instead abiotic noises of weather and water, fits into a sublime view of the wild through isolation.

• A sense of chaotic and complex texture seems to be associated with wildness. This is suggested in the Walden extract through a build-up of layers of sound and vision even in the dark of night. A richly layered series of textures is also suggested in the edgelands: “rubbish tips and nurseries, superstores and

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The spectrum asks the recorder to recognise that the wild can occur anywhere, at any scale, at any time, “in the cracks of a Manhattan sidewalk, even in the cells of our own bodies� (Cronon, 2015, p.117).

Even the tiny act of a dandelion growing along a tarmac edge betrays wildness - a force outside (and often contrary to) human control.

The spectrum acknowledges this possibility, and urban wildness can be measured rather than dismissed because of its setting. Overgrown and dilapidated buildings, poisoned industrial sites, fenced and overgrown forgotten corners: despite their minimal spiritual benefit to a majority of people, that such places can score highly on the spectrum because of their ecological independence and isolation from society suggests a benefit to retaining them. They fulfil the key aspects of wildness: process, animal, tree, human. Though they are generally only experienced by a slim number of people, for those who do chance upon them (or go out of their way to find them), there is a sense of discovery, adventure and solitude that could not be replicated through design or improved through better access or interpretation boards. Because of this, there is a strong argument for protecting such places. Their small audience can only help to assist in their status as a sort of wilderness: in the early days of the sublime, wildland would only have been appreciated by a small fraction of society.

Their esotericism creates the wilderness.

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Figure 5: PATH: the spectrum of wildness.

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2.

URBAN WILD I NG “Somewhere in the hollows and spaces between our carefully managed wilderness areas and the creeping, flattening effects of global capitalism, there are still places where an overlooked England truly exists, places where ruderals familiar here since the last ice sheets retreated have found a way to live with each successive wave of new arrivals ... unexamined places that thrive on disregard.�

Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts Edgelands (2012, p.10)

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My call is for rewilding to be brought into our towns and cities.

There is the potential for wildness anywhere, and urban wilding has the potential to wild people’s everyday lives, connect wildlife much more meaningfully with the city, and provide a richer alternative to current urban growth policies such as the green belt: one which protects brownfield sites as well as the best greenfield.

A TOWN’S RELATIONSHIP TO ITS LANDSCAPE: THE GREEN BELT

the zone of agricultural land which is around it, and thus for ever destroy its right to be called a ‘Garden City’? Surely not” (1985, p.103). His view demonstrates how fundamental this agricultural belt was to his vision of the Garden City - so much so that I would argue that the belt itself is the garden he describes, not individual plots within the city. In turn, this vision paints an image of a belt that is tended and managed, as a garden would be.

Martin Elson (1986, xxiii) describes the original - and still fundamental - purposes of green belt as follows:

• Keeping the growth of an already built-up area in check, • Preventing distinct settlements from merging, • Preserving a town’s unique character.

To understand our towns and cities’ changing relationship to the wider British landscape, I have studied the policy of green belt, and how this might relate to the wild.

Sir Patrick Abercrombie’s 1944 Greater London Plan saw the first protections on agricultural land surrounding an existing city, though for an earlier view, Howard’s Garden Cities of To-morrow can be studied. Though not named a ‘green belt’, Howard imagined each new city with its own girdle of land distinct from the city itself, containing farms, allotments and institutions. When questioning how the Garden City would grow, he postulates “shall it build on

Figure 6: Illustrative garden city plan, by Ebenezer Howard (1902).

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According to Elson, the two core permitted land uses within the belt are agriculture and mineral extraction (1986, xxix). The inclusion of the latter gives us a good impression of what one’s genuine experience of a green belt will be, and puts the former into context: this is not a place of peaceful scenery, greenery and nature; in fact it has clear functions of rural industry and unattractive human activity. It is easy to see that the green belt has great potential for conflict.

It is fundamental to note that none of the early green belt texts

- from Howard, Raymond Unwin or Abercrombie - mention nature or wildlife. Their purpose is purely human and social for recreation, forestry and farming. There is no mention of the value of closeness to nature, the wild or animals. However, when one considers the social policies contemporary to the green belt designations this is not surprising: biodiversity was not recognised as it is now, and undoubtedly a larger percentage of the population then still had a connection to the land. Agriculture was on the verge of intensification, which in the years to follow would change the landscape significantly. This was a wholly different time for humannature relationships, and the push for green belt was dominated by concerns of overcrowded cities. 14

AN URBAN VISION OF REWILDING

When considering my vision for urban wilding, Jonathan Prior and Emily Brady’s definition has been crucial: “a process of (re)introducing or restoring wild organisms and/ or ecological processes to ecosystems where such organisms or processes are either missing or are ‘dysfunctional’” (2017, p.5).

Three key points emerge:

• Autonomy is key for the wild to occur, and the definition hints With contemporary urban design demanding compact settlements over sprawling suburbs, the positive aspects of the increasingly unfashionable green belt are still relevant today15. Can more compact towns go hand in hand with a richer, enhanced natural landscape? I believe so - though only if the people living within them can access these enhanced landscapes easily. This is what the green belt has arguably always looked to achieve; but its ambition to connect urban slum-dwellers to the countryside has never been meaningfully fulfilled. 16 Through modern eyes, it is clear that in landscape terms “much of the green belt does not warrant protection on landscape or ecological grounds and increases the pressure on more worthwhile land” (Blackman, 2008, p.16). The belt’s perseverance, unchanged over the last 60 years, has meant that the landscapes which its founders treasured have changed dramatically – even becoming the opposite of what we would want to save today – but are protected as fiercely as ever. The sanctity of the green belt should be questioned when development on brownfield is automatically preferred. When left to go wild, the latter often harbours a diverse range of plant life highly personal to the area, and therefore is a sanctuary for urban pollinators, birds, even lizards. Their very wildness often means they are more valuable for wildlife than the industrialised, impoverished agricultural green fields that border towns.

From a Swindon perspective, another key failure of the green belt is its limit to a small handful of cities, usually very large metropolises or historic university and cathedral towns. Should a policy to preserve countryside not be universal to all towns over a certain size? Is one place’s natural landscape setting worth more than another’s?

Towns such as Swindon, which has roughly tripled in size over the last 50 years, enjoy no large strategic plan to safeguard their surrounding landscape of agriculture, floodplain and woodland only piecemeal protections. This thesis seeks to appreciate every town’s unique natural setting through the frame of wildness - its peculiar waste ground species and the chance for city inhabitants, even in the most uninspiring of settlements, to connect to a wilder life. Urban wilding could offer an alternative to the either/or debate of brownfield/greenfield development.

principally - though not exclusively - on priority of natural process over human-led process. A desired end point is not given, just a credence to ‘mother nature’ to lead as she wants: there is an element of faith in nature to take the reins and guide itself.

• The restoration of missing species in an ecosystem is crucial.

This aspect of the definition is particularly unique to Britain which is so depleted of its native fauna, and which, lacking a land bridge, can only see a return to its true/original ecosystem through human intervention. Rather than creating a paradox however, I see this as one of the most positive aspects of British rewilding - that humans will be intrinsically involved in the process of reintroducing animals.

• Self-regulation is essential for a sustainably wild place. There is still space for human intervention and interaction here, but the crucial baseline must be that nature can self-regulate. For a system to be truly self-regulatory however, there is an implied acceptance that human involvement is required to restore the missing processes or species which at the moment mean any ‘rewilded’ systems would not be sustainable, and would need constant management - grazing, burning, culling etc.

Perhaps the only way I could improve on Prior and Brady’s definition is to include an element of rewilding human life as essential: “A process of restoring wild organisms and/or ecological processes to places where they are missing or dysfunctional, in order to restore autonomy, ensure selfregulation and touch a person’s life with wild nature.”

The acknowledgement that rewilding is a process, and not a story with a desired endpoint, is essential. The inclusion of a human element allows for a variety of experiences, whilst attempting to balance an anthropocentric aspect with a fundamentally ecocentric form of conservation. Unlike wilderness, the term rewilding does not prescribe a particular scale, and does not necessarily speak of isolation from the rest of humanity. This is why, in my view, it lends itself to an urban version perfectly.

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The spiritual aspect of wilderness and the rewilding of people’s lives is crucial to an urban wilding strategy17. Many people have experienced the fearless glowing eyes of an urban fox lit in headlights or an unexpectedly low-soaring bird of prey glide across the motorway, finger-y wings outstretched. It is this feeling of awe, and therefore reverence for a life that is quite Other from one’s own, that I am fascinated by. And why should it be limited to only the countryside? It should be embraced as a valuable city experience too. I believe that increasing the potential of chance encounters with wildlife in the city should not be shied away from, and would in fact be invaluable to our urban wellbeing whilst simultaneously facilitating conservation efforts. Connecting with that Other makes the wild world that we are so often being persuaded to protect far more tangible.

A mindset of humanity vs. nature, which Cronon argues is strengthened by people-less wilderness conservation, must be avoided. Urban wilding must include humanity as a fundamental element, and not prohibit human interaction. Varying shades of wildness must be provided in order to allow for maximum human engagement, and so the human wildness dial is key in the design of an urban wilding strategy.

In Beyond Conservation Taylor argues that the general public must have a better understanding of wildland, but in particular large carnivores and the acceptance that nature entails risk (2005, p.226).

By focusing on experience, he appears to be against a strategy that looks too scientific, for fear of alienation. Urban wilding gives the opportunity for urban settlements to be a part of a wild network, both beckoning people out into the countryside but also drawing animals in, and therefore provoking chance encounters.

I believe the answer lies in a strategy that asks the urban population to routinely confront wildness within the city. Cronon sees our modern obsession with distant wildland as the cause for a lack of connection to the nature in our towns and cities (2015, p.110).

A new focus on wildness in cities can offer a better connection to home for those who escape at the weekend in favour of ‘wild’ leisure pursuits; as well as opening up wild experiences to those unable to afford leisure weekends away.

My call to the wild Brownfield sites, through their desolation, are already the wild hearts of our towns and cities and can form the central element to urban wilding. Often an indiscriminate label (Hough, 2006, p.154), brownfield sites that are rich in history and home to natural succession can be seen as favourable to what Hough describes the “new, placeless environments” (2006, p.2) that off-the-shelf regeneration leads to.

If nature had teeth once more, would it bite into towns?

Where green belt is passive and perceived as picturesque, a strategy

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for green teeth offers towns and cities a more visceral, sublime experience of landscape. This is an urban wilding strategy that can link into UK-wide rewilding networks, and has the potential to grow and constantly change. Green teeth confront urban people with a varied and more heightened experience of nature, but also present a different way for towns themselves to develop, shrink or grow.

By reserving our best wild brownfield sites and choosing to develop connectedly and densely, the best and most accessible greenfield can also be preserved.

Most large-scale rewilding strategies describe a network of cores (sanctuary areas), buffer zones (absorbing the impact of human traffic), and connecting corridors. Green teeth too will comprise corridors, buffers and cores: with each component playing a different role in beckoning the wild into our grey conurbations, and rewilding human life.

SOME WELLBEING BENEFITS OF URBAN WILDING

With the number of urban dwellers forecast to increase substantially over the next century, and with small and medium towns expected to take a large proportion of this growth (Simson, 2016), the need for such urbanised populations to connect with their natural surroundings grows more pressing.

Though humanity and nature must not be divorced, the persevering strength of wilderness lies in its status as apart from humanity.

It seems essential that an increasingly urban (and suburban) population should occasionally glimpse a world they do not inhabit: one that runs independently to and sometimes subversively against neat and orderly controls. Just as wilderness was a means for the New World to connect with God, Taylor explains how the divine can appear in his modern wildness: “God is not a postulate...but the direct experience of presence - a feeling, a seeing of connectedness and beauty” (2005, p.22). Though difficult to pin down, the sensation of something greater than oneself appears to be key: impossible to comprehend fully but a universal process that is continually moving and changing. Taylor sees God in his experience, and whilst not everyone may agree, the connectedness of nature is a comforting experience that is central to rewilding’s relationship to human wellbeing.

Another central theme to rewilding’s wellbeing benefits, though controversial, is the reintroduction of missing animal species. Again Taylor is a strongly supportive voice, describing the reinstatement

of Britain’s lost guild of herbivores and carnivores as “the retrieval of something lost in the human heart, the consequence of which is a particular loneliness of spirit that comes from the absence of animals” (2005, p.38). It would be irrational to reintroduce large fauna into the city itself, however green teeth’s connections to national wild networks would leave a small possibility for large fauna such as lynx, elk, or beaver to occasionally migrate through an urban area’s green teeth. Though their carrying capacity would be very low, that the teeth held the potential for the rare harbouring of beasts could reconnect people to their wild counterparts.

The reintroduction of animals demonstrates the breadth of feelings and experiences that rewilding can stir. As well as the wonder associated with wildness - there is also fear and adrenalin. As rewilding often includes the reintroduction of missing predators, it would heighten the chances of experiencing the “terrible beauty” (Prior & Brady, 2017, p.19) of seeing predator with prey. If the idea of witnessing predation in the wild is met with squeamishness, it only goes to demonstrates how large the distance is that has grown between humanity and wild animals. As Pratt-Bergstrom

suggests, forming a truly close connection to the natural world cannot be “about habituating wildlife to us, but about habituating ourselves to the wild world” (2016). In a study exploring biophilia’s cultural aspects, Gary Nabhan and Sara St.Antoine explore what is described as the “extinction of experience” (1993, p.233) that cultures feel when divorced from an intimate connection to their local landscapes. Burke describes the delight of experiencing the sublime, despite its origins in pain, as “a delightful horror, a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to selfpreservation, is one of the strongest of all passions” (1757, p.217).

Rewilding is about the need to change people’s perceptions of the wild, and experience the more primeval side of nature that many of us have lost. Though ambitious, Burke’s passion for the sublime shows that the idea has been popular enough before.

Farley and Roberts suggest that urban encounters with the wild are a heightened version of the sublime because of the sudden nature of the meeting. They describe the journey to vast, rural wilderness

Figure 7: Sketchbook thoughts on rewilding in an urban setting.

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in Britain as involving “a slow readjustment in terms of scale and space...” (2012, p.137), whereas a sudden encounter with urban wildness (such as a glimpsed view into an accidental brownfield meadow or a chance meeting with an urban fox) - means that “the imagination does the travelling” (2012, p.137). Where green teeth are sensory-rich they can provide immersive experiences that prompt “aesthetic engagement rather than detachment” (Prior and Brady, 2017, p.16). However, the conflict between the wild and humanity starts to present itself when one considers that antisocial behaviours are associated with ‘messy’ spaces, whilst neat green spaces signify “neighbourliness, hard work and pride” (Nassauer, 1995, p.162); rewilding will have to work hard to change such perceptions.

The intimacy of wild cores, which will be small in scale when first designated, could work in urban wilding’s favour though, as Thoreau’s personal epiphanies at Walden pond show: “we need to witness...some life pasturing freely where we never wander” (1999, p.282). Though he never lived there as a wild man as the text may suggest, Thoreau breathes the wilderness experience and ‘befriends’ nature, in all its various sublime, threatening, benign and fearful forms, describing it almost as a society in itself - “beneficent” (1999, p.120) and loving. I can see a parallel here with my own experiences of adventure and discovery in those intimate impenetrable city spaces, invisible to most but where it is possible to find connection to the nature that grows gleefully behind our turned backs.

Thoreau’s suggestion that the strength of wild experience is in its secrecy, is where the paradox of wilderness again presents itself.

Though I would want anyone to be able to engage with the wild as I have in Swindon, in doing so urban wilderness would quickly be destroyed. Perhaps the unpopularity of my strategy would save it from itself, or perhaps the short life of an urban wilderness, plundered by too many visitors, is a worthy sacrifice?

This paradox can be resolved by a different approach that presents a more sustainable option: that green teeth should not be homogenous, but they should include an array of spaces:

• from ‘lightly’ wild places with a large carrying capacity of visitors, • to highly secretive and impenetrable pockets that only the most dedicated urban explorer would want to find,

• and all the variety that lies between.

The green teeth’s corridors, cores and buffers can fulfil this range.

Their diversity is key - in Cities and Natural Process, Hough argues that a diverse urban population requires a similarly diverse choice of places to leisure in (2006, p.19). 18

In Walden, Thoreau demonstrates perfectly that a wilder life does not have to mean an abandonment of the modern: “I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a...

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spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverance them both. I love the wild not less than the good.” (1999, p.189) Rewilding satisfies those primeval instincts of adventure, the hunt, predator and prey - the instinct that excites us, and that people search for on their marathons, sky dives, and Tough Mudder events. But it also satisfies the spiritual life that Thoreau speaks of knowledge, awe and wonder.

In order to create a successful national rewilding strategy, the views of those invested in the countryside must be sought, and so it follows that a successful urban wilding network must be inclusive for those living in towns and cities. A level of unpopularity should be expected, and worked with - where people feel passion for spaces it is hoped that they will engage more meaningfully with the outcome.

The central premise of urban wilding is to make people see their city spaces differently. 19 As well as this, it must be ambitious. Rewilding could be instrumental in shifting attitudes of wildness from messy or ugly places to places full of wonder and life. Though there have been successful smallscale reintroductions (such as the red kite), a decisive shift away from spiralling biodiversity cannot be achieved through piecemeal reintroductions, or a patient wait for public attitudes to gradually warm towards the wild. Urban wilding can achieve this subtle balance between public engagement and swift ambition because the building blocks are already present in our towns. Whether small or large, brownfield sites already pepper settlements, and shunned edgeland territory permeates. Re-drawn and given a new purpose as wild cores, buffers and corridors could help this fledgling, fragmented network to grow and spark the necessary debate amongst the public. The general downward trajectory of British people’s connection to wild nature, as well as wildlife’s continuing decline, demands it. As Cronon suggests, rather than believing we can “flee into a mythical wilderness to escape history and the obligation to take responsibility” (2015, p.117), by experiencing a small amount of wildness every day, as a species we could broaden “our sense of the otherness that wilderness seeks to define and protect...reminding us of a world we did not make.” (2015, p.115)

GREEN TEETH DESIGN CODES

My first ideas saw the green teeth imitating a spectrum, with the least wild end in the city centre and the wildest parts on the city edge. However, this approach quickly became limiting: there would

CORRIDOR WHAT

• • •

Continuous corridors that demonstrate accessible ‘wilding-light’ processes.

Places for education, interpretation and engagement.

Forming a network.

BUFFER • • • • • •

WHERE

• • • • •

Along existing blue infrastructure such as streams and rivers.

Along existing green infrastructure such as woodland corridors.

Pylons or other infrastructure that already prevents development.

Could encompass existing PROW networks.

Transport corridors - particularly relevant for future decommisioning of oversized road networks.

•

CORE

A zone of varying thickness around part or all of a core.

An external boundary can be defined for the public, but the internal boundary with a core should remain flexible and indistinct.

Takes the weight of activity and intervention away from a core.

A small amount of sympathetic economic activity can take place.

Could grow in situations where managed retreat is appropriate.

Only a small amount of interpretation / signage / educational activity.

• • •

No human measures, sanctuaries for the wild.

A range of sizes from tiny to large.

A mixture of timescales, from single generations (c.25 years) to beyond a human life time (c.80 years).

Around land associated with a core.

• • • •

Existing brownfield.

Areas which look to become economically unsustainable or where managed retreat of past development is feasible.

Land in need of remediation.

Extreme terrain.

CARRYING CAPACITY

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Medium-high

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A permanent network to ensure the sustainability of wilding initiatives in the cores.

Continually growing more connected with other corridors and adjacent wildland.

As a settlement grows, corridors grow out with it.

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Flexible and not rigidly defined.

Able to grow and shrink depending on the local area.

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Some permanent, others temporary Spanning a range of timescales and therefore seral stages

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Figure 8: Urban wilding design codes: strategy.

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Figure 9: Urban wilding design codes: Process.

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Core

Buffer

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Core Buffer Corridor

Figure 10: Urban wilding design codes: Animal.

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Figure 11: Urban wilding design codes: Tree.

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Core

Buffer

Corridor

Core Buffer Corridor

Figure 12: Urban wilding design codes: Human.

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be no opportunity to chance upon wilderness close to the city centre, and it could lead to a homogenisation of the outer suburbs’ wild spaces. My ideas for the green teeth since this point have become more varied and - I hope - inspiring.

An overall strategy for mapping green teeth is given in figure 8.

From there, greater detail is given in four design codes (figures 9 12) that should be used together to make each corridor, buffer and core wilder. Each is essential because they have been involved by the wildness spectrum of chapter one: Process, Animal, Tree, Human.

long stays and even economic activity will be able to take place. The wild cores - being almost entirely reserved for wild nature’s benefit - have no direct human focus to their codes, and so therefore have a very low carrying capacity (visited infrequently and only by a dedicated fringe of people such as urban explorers). Buffer zones act as a mid-point between the corridors and cores: measures such as interpretation materials and designed gateways could be suitable, but essentially natural process will rule; they are able to take the weight of visitors off the wild cores.

• When describing the shortcomings of the American wilderness Some notes on the design codes:

• Rewilded rivers should be the foundation for wild corridors, and where canals, streams and brooks already exist a series of wild sanctuaries could be reserved around them. Water courses, as well as providing a transport corridor for wildlife, can support the feeling of narrative for human explorers. Daylighting culverts and re-naturalising canalised streams would actively demonstrate a positive wilding strategy to those unclear of its meaning.

• The wild corridors will be the most extensive and most widely accessible part of the green teeth; it is here that theories such as Joan Iverson Nassauer’s ‘cues to care’ (1995) can help to win over people to rewilding by mixing accessibility with natural process:

• Occasional mowing, such as a path through long grass, • Flowering plants, • Trees, • Wildlife feeders.

• To protect wild corridors from negative treatment “the human intention to care for the landscape” (Nassauer, 1995, p.161) must be evident. Though this approach would not be suitable for the wild cores, this lighter touch can fulfil a middle ground, still retaining enough of the wild to assist people in their interpretation of the whole network. A careful line must be trodden however: one must steer clear of designing a space like a garden; instead by placing the “unfamiliar and frequently undesirable” (1995, p.161) of wildness inside an attractive frame, people will be encouraged to interact and understand. In this way, though the corridors will not be wilderness in themselves, they will embody a pale shade of wildness, and will play an important role in changing public perceptions of wild nature.

• The carrying capacity of each element affects each design code.

Corridors - expected to form the main interpretive element of the teeth - will have a large carrying capacity, but will therefore never feel exceptionally wild: within them, interpretation,

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movement, Cronon argues that “once set aside within the fixed and carefully policed boundaries of the modern bureaucratic state, the wilderness lost its savage image and became safe” (2015, p.109); his analysis suggests that boundaries should be refrained from in cores to retain their fundamentally wild nature. Indeed a lack of boundaries (or at least places where edges are blurred and penetrable), will allow greater animal as well as human infiltration. Is there something of the aesthetic of a gap in the hedge / a removed section of fence / a tumbling wall that speaks of the timelessness of the wild? It is important that there are no strict boundaries between buffers and their corresponding cores: they will superficially appear the same and there will be no obvious transition between the two. The buffers simply act as a physical safeguard to the core.

• As human-managed places, nature reserves will not be a part of the wild network itself, but are essential to it. The RSPB’s 2001 publication Futurescapes: Large Scale Habitat Restoration calls for a balance between new wildland and restoring nonwild habitats such as hay meadows or lowland heath, which Taylor celebrates as an accessible dual approach, appealing to wilderness seekers whilst also “providing recreational enjoyment close to urban and industrial areas” (2005, p.233).

By working alongside the wild network, managed reserves would assist in demonstrating the variety of species that both human management and exclusively natural process can attract.

• The return of large fauna to wildlands further afield will increase the likelihood of chancing upon them in the green teeth. As well as this, where teeth are well connected to suitable out-oftown habitat and have the capacity for a sustainable breeding population, the reintroduction of certain bird species (such as the goshawk) or small mammals (such as the pine marten) should be undertaken.

A WILDER FUTURE

Given the growing momentum behind organisations such as the Lynx UK Trust, who submitted an application for the reintroduction of lynx to the Kielder Forest in July 2017 (Baynes, 2017), it seems that large mammal reintroductions are inevitable. As animals would not be expected to be reintroduced into cities themselves, the design codes stipulate that cities should invest or assist in reintroductions to neighbouring countryside or wildland, in order to fulfil the essential ‘animal’ aspect of wildness. Taylor describes a healthy human-animal relationship as “respect, or tolerance, and a willingness to accept some economic loss and personal risk in order to accord a certain sanctity to nature’s ways” (2005, p.127).

In Britain our fear of native carnivores overtakes the fact that wild predators will instinctively avoid us: noisy, upright on two legs, often in brightly coloured clothing and accompanied by equallybrazen dogs (Lynx UK Trust and Vizcaya, 2015). Our over-zealous fear betrays our poor connection to real animal behaviours. Most cities around the world experience large urban mammals - from civets to bears to leopards to deer; why should the UK not expect the same? Though the cultural shift will need to be large, the potential for seeing large native fauna close to our cities will be fundamental in fixing our relationship to wild nature.

requirements - will see fundamental changes over the next century as oil is depleted and inventions such as the self-driving car alter our dependence on roads and vehicles radically (Topham , 2017).

Where human-led development fails to address such issues, the wild can provide alternatives and optimism.

As well as attitudes to animals, green teeth can also change attitudes to town development itself. By designating corridors and pockets of land as unsuitable for development, a more sensitive and mature growth can develop. Satellite developments would no longer be necessary, and with the best brownfields being reserved for wild nature, higher density settlements would result as the ‘edgelands’ grew more desirable places to live beside. In towns without a green belt, pathways rich in wildlife would suddenly gain a level of protection, within the town itself and where it meets the countryside.

This way, though unprofitable agricultural land bounding a town is still likely to be developed, land which is ecologically important and that works as part of a national wild network would be protected.

It will be crucial for the network of green teeth not to remain static, but to be adaptable. If some wild spaces require development for economic or social means, this should be accommodated, though further spaces would be required in their stead for future generations. Cities have always worked on waves of boom and bust, and perhaps urban wilding can help to make the most of those times of bust through managed urban retreat. The idea of retreat is not simply a fanciful dystopian invention, but can already be found in examples such as the Emscher Landscape Park in Germany. Huge cities such as Detroit in the US, overstretched over the last century and in fiscal and social crisis, seemingly do not respond to growthoriented strategies (Requiem for Detroit?, 2010). Many modern settlements - developed in line with the motor car and all its

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3.

WILD SWINDO N

“This story begins slowly, with my efforts to engage more fully with the ecosystems on my doorstep, to discover in them something of the untamed spirit I would like to resurrect. If you would care to push past the coats, you can join me there.�

George Monbiot Feral (2014, p.13)

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Having lived in Swindon - designated an Expanded Town under the Town Development Act in 1952 - for five years, my appreciation for this much maligned and odd settlement has deepened. On investigation, it appears like an interstitial space within an interstitial space. So much of it is a no-man’s-land: its unpopulated swathes of amenity grass dividing housing estates, its malaise of ageing retail parks, abandoned railway and factory infrastructure, empty trading estates and oversized roadways and junctions. The town itself is in limbo too, trapped on the mainline between London and Bristol but not quite belonging anywhere. Though it sits tantalisingly close it is not the Cotswolds, and it feels distinct from its ceremonial county of Wiltshire in geography, society and politics. But it is where I have experienced some of my most meaningful connections to the wild, and where my appreciation of the many shades of wildness has grown from.

When considering the benefits of urban wilding, this interstitial space (with such a tame urban/suburban population) has become the perfect place to test my designs.

SWINDON’S REGIONAL WILD NETWORK

When considering a macro-regional wild network that urban rewilding initiatives would link to, Swindon’s geographical context is not immediately inspiring, being surrounded by pastoral agriculture.

Taylor’s suggested wild habitat network (2005, p.244) as described in Beyond Conservation 20 is shown in Figure 14. This ambitious network suggests the most likely link for Swindon to larger wildland would be to the north. Natural England’s National Character Areas, which show Swindon’s position as a meeting point for several different character areas, could suggest a further role for the town’s wild network as an important junction for wildlife and human movement. The networks within Swindon itself should reflect these diverse characters.

Even if the land around Swindon remains largely agricultural, which is likely considering the long human history of farming in the region, policies that are sympathetic to rewilding could easily be enacted on farmland. Such a culture shift could be relatively easy considering the impacts that leaving the EU could have, and the change in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funding that will ensue. Many of the most serious pressures on wildlife in the agricultural landscapes of Western Britain, such as the monocultures of ryegrass in pastoral fields and the resulting loss in herb-rich meadows, early mowing for silage and the reduction in mixed farming (Taylor, 2005, p.186), could be reversed. Streams could be re-naturalised, copses replanted and farmland ponds re-dug as further measures. Though this would not result in new ‘wildland’ the resulting landscapes would see the return of a huge amount of wildlife, and could much more easily accommodate reintroduced missing herbivores (such as the elk) or, in time, even carnivores (such as the wolf). The wildness dials suggest that such changes would create a more dynamic farm landscape filled with texture and birdsong and the chance to meet an unfamiliar animal; scoring them much higher on the wildness spectrum.

HISTORIC CHANGE

Figure 13: Sketchbook study of the River Ray.

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Historic maps show the rapid growth of Swindon over the last 150 years. Originally “an obscure village” (Harloe, 1975, p.14) on a hill, Swindon would have been dwarfed by much larger neighbouring market towns such as Marlborough and Wootton Bassett, and even by the ancient villages of Purton and Highbridge. The region would for many centuries have been dominated by belts of Royal Forests: Bradon Forest lay just to the west of Swindon, with a continuing belt stretching southwest including the Forests of Chippenham,

Taylor’s suggested wild network

Former Royal Forests

Salisbury Plain

Possible connection

Figure 14: Swindon’s potential regional wild network.

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Figure 15: Swindon 1828 (Great Britain Historical GIS Project, 2016)

Figure 16: Swindon 1889 (Digimap Ancient Roam, 2016a).

Figure 18: Swindon 1960 (Digimap Ancient Roam, 2016c).

Figure 19: Swindon 1987 (Digimap Ancient Roam, 2016d).

Melksham and Selwood. This belt of Forests is thought to have originated in a very ancient stretch of wildwood known as Sealwudu, stretching from the Thames Vale clay soils down to the Blackmore Vale on land with challenging topography and poor soils (Anon, 1959). After decades of abuse by locals, Bradon and other Wiltshire Forests were disafforested in 1627 (Anon, 1959), their ghosts still just legible today as sparsely populated areas, often with fragments of copse and commons. Could they one day return to forest?

Figure 17: Swindon 1925 (Digimap Ancient Roam, 2016b).

With a population of just 1198 in 1801 (Harloe, 1975, p.14), Swindon would lend its name to a radical new settlement at the foot of its hill - the home for the new Engine Establishment on the Great Western Railway line between Bristol and London in 1841. Old Town and New Town met in 1900 (Harloe, 1975, p.19), and the 20th century town then witnessed extremes of both bust and boom.

From the railway works decline from 1914, to the interwar national building surge that saw much ribbon development - John Betjemen commenting “Swindon is a warning to all England to keep watch on the speculative builders” (Harloe, 1975, p.44). In 1947 Swindon followed the New Towns policies and - much to Wiltshire Council’s awe - began to purchase large areas of surrounding agricultural land in order to build large social housing estates, often with formal agreements that housed overspill London communities. A green belt was proposed in the 1950s, and though plans were drawn up it was never implemented (Elson, 1986). Swindon town council continued to face constraints during its expansion, and in 1976 local historian Michael Harloe wrote that the constant hurdles led to “the adoption of a piecemeal, opportunistic strategy...[where] physical layout of the new development sometimes lacks ... overall coherance” (1975, p.260). This pattern seems to have continued in the decades following his text.

The many suburbs, such as those of West Swindon, which sprawled out during the 1980s and 1990s leave much to be desired: indolently low-density and distinctly placeless. The town has been earmarked for 34,000 further homes between 2006 and 2026 (Blackman, 2008, p.17), with areas to the east and south as a focus (see figure 22). Auspiciously, initiatives such as the Great Western Community Forest have been involved in the strategic planning stages. Perhaps as a nod to wilder nature, and away from the swathes of amenity grass common around much of Swindon: “the forest is seeking to move away from traditional amenity spaces to a more natural landscape that is able to support a wider mix of wildlife and is less costly to manage” (Blackman, 2008, p.17).

This expanding town seems to forget where its centres once lay, but contentedly swallows up more and more of its bordering farmland.

This newly acquired ‘Swindon’ should not be replaced just with the standard amenity grass of housing estates, road verges and playing fields, though. The wild nature that thrives in Swindon’s forgotten brownfield, its drainage corridors and scrub, should grow out into the countryside simultaneously with new development.

Figure 20: Swindon 2017 (Digimap Roam).

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Woodland 44

Scrubland or naturally regerating land

Park or Country Park

Nature Reserves

Cemeteries

Allotments

Playing fields or pitches

Residential amenity grassland

Farmland pasture

Brownfield

Retail or industrial estates

Figure 21: A survey of Swindon’s open and green spaces.

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SWINDON GREEN TEETH

make this impractical). Perhaps a new purpose, as wild corridors wildflowers, copses and glades - would be a more appropriate form for these waterside stretches.

Whilst culverted in places and highly canalised, the river Ray, its tributaries the Hreod Burna and Groundwell Brook, and the river Cole and its tributary the Dorcan Stream, will form a key component of Swindon’s urban wilding. The Cole has already been part of a naturalisation pilot project, the Wild Rivers Programme by the River Restoration Centre (Taylor, 2005, p.68), and there is the potential for rewilding along all of Swindon’s watercourses.

Restoring banks, meanders and riffle sections to watercourses has huge ecological benefits, as well as helping to slow the flow of water in storm events, mitigating flood risks.

Many of the large dual carriageways in the town boast the same residential amenity grassland. As our relationship to cars changes in the coming years, from the advent of companies like Uber and the arrival of self-drive cars, to the end of oil and large-scale job automation, we may find that road systems such as Swindon’s are hugely oversized. When 0.6 hectare junctions (Swindon’s Magic Roundabout) and 20 metre wide roads (such as the A4259) are no longer necessary, wild green teeth can grow into them: a readymade system of cores and corridors, and places which people could begin to engage with, rather than simply speed through. Massive car parks (of which Swindon has many) may have an even shorter future, and these too could grow wild as they are decommissioned.

Swindon’s urban watercourses are often associated with long stretches of what I have named residential amenity grassland (figure 20). These long, wide stretches of grass have no obvious function apart from as visual green buffers to housing and informal areas to play ball games in summer (though their topography can

As 20th century trading estates, industrial estates and retail parks age, they will doubtless be redeveloped. With the potential for more mixed-use functions, and higher-density form, there would without

TADPOLE FARM KINGSDOWN

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Figure 22: Swindon’s likely growth over the next ten years (based on Swindon Borough Council, 2015)

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Cat Thomas University of Gloucestershire

Green corridor opportunities

Safeguarded canal route

Projection: British National Grid

Key road/rail route

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doubt be room for new wild cores and corridors to flow through them. Green teeth are flexible, and so as plots become vacant there is the potential for wild cores to grow of their own accord temporarily, whilst a new purpose is found for the site. During time of recession or economic stagnation, wild cores can provide rich places for animals and humans in the city. As in the Netherlands’ 2004 Dutch Ecological Network plans, it is even possible to dismantle industrial sites that have been poorly sited in favour of clear habitat corridors (Taylor, 2005, p.218). I imagine that one day Hawksworth will not be a trading estate, but a ragged temple to 1980s light industrial units, crossed by footpaths and veiled by birches, rowans and badger setts.

Figure 23: Sketchbook study of the Dorcan Brook.

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SWINDON GREEN TEETH 0-10 YEARS Each green tooth connects to an important cultural or natural landscape on the borders of Swindon, such as Lydiard Park, or Coate Water Country Park. This ensures engagement with the population that already uses these sites, and guarantees longevity for the network. They also crucially ensure a ‘green’ connection to the wider countryside, which in itself will have started on a rewilding process.

Corridors are established along waterways that are already present. Any amenity grassland that runs parallel becomes wildflower meadow, and along with new tree planting, birds, insects and small mammals are immediately encouraged into the town.

Large transport infrastructure, such as the railway and certain dual carriageways with wide grass verges, introduce a further layer of wild corridors to the plan.

Cores can be found in places already derelict and returning to natural process, abandoned plots or forgotten edges. These will transform and grow in the coming years. Most cores have a corresponding buffer enclosing or part-enclosing them. Newly defined, they will slowly begin to mimic and merge into their corresponding cores, though some economic activity will take place in them. Because derelict sites becoming cores are often found in trading and industrial estates, these adjacent plots will become their buffers. Economic activity will still take place, at least whilst the units live out their serviceable life, however their lack of intense human activity (they are often unpopulated outside working hours) and their large tracts of buffer planting, overgrown yardspace, poor access and extensive flat roofs, make them the ideal places to enact the buffer design codes. Other suitable buffer space can be found in large tracts of residential amenity grass: though some can be retained for its leisure function, areas adjacent to a wild core can return to natural process.

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Though still fragmented at this stage, the wild network of green teeth will protect the wild nature already present in Swindon, and begin to familiarise Swindonians with the sublime of wildness.

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Mouldon Hill Country Park, connecting to the river Ray and the Cotswolds.

Lydiard Country Park, connecting eastwards towards the remnants of Bradon forest.

Coate Water Country Park, connecting to the south downs.

Groundwell Brook wild corridor.

Overgrown tree belts and scrub around the Groundwell Brook form a wild core, with adjacent areas of the Groundwell industrial estate acting as a buffer: trees freed from management, drainage daylighted etc.; and vacant lots allowed to return to natural process.

Old railway infrastructure abutting the Mini plant, already with poor access, is a wild core.

Hreod Burna storm drain wild core.

Hreod Burna wild corridor and Hreod Burna Urban Forest wild core.

Barnfield and the Swindon Lagoons becomes a large wild core and buffer zone, already with minimal human management and criss-crossed by the river Ray’s water channels.

Railway ponds wild cores, with limited accessibility, between railway and industrial estate.

Iffley Road gasometer wild core.

Former carriage works wild core, already returning to nature.

Hawksworth trading estate becomes a wild buffer, already rarely populated by night or at the weekend. Some plots are already vacant or their units no longer fit for purpose, these can return to natural process with minimal management.

Fleming Way wild corridor, an inappropriately oversized town centre roadway, gives more space to wild nature.

Corporation Street wild core, already returning to the wild.

River Cole wild corridor.

Dorcan Stream wild corridor.

Dorcan trading estate, the linked derelict plots become wild cores, with adjacent plots becoming wild buffers over time with increased natural process.

Wick Cross wild core and buffer, a woodland copse with the potential to grow.

Westlea Rise wild core and buffer.

Mannington wild corridor.

Broadmead wild core and buffer, centred around the canalised river Ray. Rushey Platt industrial estate wild core and buffer sits at an important node between the river Ray, the railway and the beginning of the town centre. Already bordered by thick vegetation, and with extensive flat roofs, as units age or become unfit for purpose they could be allowed to grow derelict and overgrown.

Great Western Way wild core and buffer, already quite wild and hemmed between the railway and the A3102, overlooked by a stretch of pylons.

Blagrove becomes a wild buffer, with its huge units surrounded by substantial grass or woodland buffer, easy to connect to form a mosaic of growing wild habitats.

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SWINDON GREEN TEETH 11-25 YEARS Animal reintroductions in adjacent land will have commenced. In a gradually replanted, joined up Bradon Forest, pine martens could be reintroduced to help control the grey squirrel population. Where appropriate, semi-wild stock such as the Exmoor pony could be reintroduced to neighbouring farmland which is no longer profitable to farm post-CAP funding (such as the Upper Thames Clay Vales to the north west of the town and east towards Wantage). With a wilder countryside, populations of currently rare species such as the wild boar and the red deer may begin to spread across the country, and could begin to enter towns like Swindon. Their contributions to natural process, such as the boar’s turning of the soil, will in the long-term be essential to dynamic, sustainable wild cores. With no natural predators present however, their numbers would have to be controlled by humans.

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Where corridors were before divided by roads, connections will have been made to ensure an unbroken corridor through a variety of measures: from green bridges, closing unnecessary roads or directing them into tunnels, to road narrowing and increased tree planting to encourage a constant canopy. Waterways will have been naturalised and canalised edges removed. Culverted waterways will have started to be revealed, as well as the return of Swindon’s canal. Where corridors were narrow, such as those on former roadside buffer grassland, they will have been widened where appropriate. Wild corridors will also have grown out into new developments as they are built.

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Cores will have matured and their edges dissipated. Where appropriate, some cores may have been returned to development, with new cores designated in their place. Buffers will also have matured so that in some areas they are aesthetically indistinguishable from cores.

In particular, retail parks will most likely have seen their car parks empty as vehicle and shopping habits change; where appropriate, large areas of parking will be given over to buffers or even cores. Where large industrial units reach the end of their life, and new units are not required, the old structures will be allowed to overgrow, like archaeology emerging from the rainforest.

Where some housing developments are reviewed as obstructing the path of green teeth, their edges can begin to be designated as buffers and cores themselves. Development will move to focus on higher density housing.

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Stanton Country Park, connecting to the midvale ridge and Oxfordshire clay vales.

Kingsdown town development.

Kingsdown wild corridor, connecting westwards to Stanton Country Park.

Extension of Groundwell industrial estate wild core and buffer.

Blunsdon St Andrew wild corridor.

New Eastern Villages town development.

A limited wild corridor along the railway should be possible, where the central infrastructure is maintained for transport, but edges of wild meadow and scrub provide a strong link through the town east>west (with measures such as cattlegrids required to prevent wild animals straying onto the railway).

As they age, low density housing estates such as Kestrel Drive, which turn their back on their surrounding landscape, become wild buffers or cores.

Extension of the river Cole wild corridor through the new eastern villages.

The daylighting of the river Cole in Walcot provides a new wild corridor.

Greenbridge retail park becomes a wild buffer, as car parks become defunct or the large retail units are no longer required.

Coate town development.

Land to the south of Coate becomes a wild corridor, connecting the southern green tooth to the south downs more effectively.

The reinstated Wilts and Berks canal can act as a wild corridor, connecting to Wichelstowe and the southwestern green tooth.

Great Western Way wild corridor.

Wichelstowe town development.

Wichelstowe wild corridor.

Windmill Hill becomes a buffer to its tree belt wild core - planted to obscure noise and views from the motorway, the large swathe of trees receives minimal management already. Empty plots on Windmill Hill can become wild cores in time.

The wilder countryside of the upper Thames clay vales and the downs connects to Swindon’s green teeth.

A growing Bradon forest connects Swindon’s western green teeth to wild habitat.

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SWINDON GREEN TEETH 26-50 YEARS As the national wild network continues to grow, further opportunities to experience wild nature are given to Swindon’s inhabitants, connected to this rich resource of the sublime.

As further reintroductions are made, animals such as the beaver may appear. With time, a more naturalised river Thames could lend small beaver populations to its tributaries the Ray and Cole, which may in turn become residents on the quieter parts of the town’s outskirts.

Within this time frame, some predator reintroductions may be beginning also. Though a vast, highly connected forest network would be required to hold viable breeding populations of lynx or wolf, this may have been achieved in places such as the Forest of Dean, or certainly in mountain regions such as Snowdonia, the Cambrian and Black Mountains. That large, majestic predators could be living in these regenerating regions new woodlands much the same as the new woodlands of Bradon - could spark an associated sublime experience for visitors to the latter.

Wild corridors continue to grow and make the teeth better connected, widening where appropriate or biting into new and existing neighbourhoods, providing a strong, coherent link to the wilder countryside.

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New buffers and cores are reserved along the green teeth, as existing ones mature and merge with their neighbouring corridors.

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Swindon may still be continuing to develop along its previous directions: west along the M4, east along the A420 Oxford road and north along the A419 Cirencester road.

Perhaps however, green teeth will have encouraged higher density, town centre-focused development alongside a richer, wilder town. It is expected that, as particularly low density late 20th / early 21st century housing estates age and become undesirable, they will find a new purpose. If higher density re-development is not suitable due to their location away from key transport corridors, or they sit adjacent to green teeth, they can become wild cores and buffers themselves, home to wildlife and people.

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Stanton wild corridor connects Stratton to Stanton Fitzwarren.

Pylons have shaped housing estates such as those in Groundwell West.

As higher density, more centralised development shapes Swindon alongside its growing green teeth, estates such as these - dominated by humming power lines and the large swathes of tarmac under them where dwellings cannot be built - could be returned to nature as wild cores.

The oversized infrastructure of Thamesdown Drive becomes a wild corridor.

Where appropriate, wild cores and buffers such as those at Orbital and Haydon are joined up, providing better connectivity and a more sustainable sanctuary for wild animals to live and breed.

Industrial land that may need remediation, such as that bordering the Mini plant, is reserved as wild core and buffer. The Stratton green tooth becomes fuller and richer as a result, allowing more space for the wild and providing a coherent green link from Gorse Hill northwards to Stanton Fitzwarren Country Park.

Covingham bungalows grow into an extension of the Cole wild corridor.

More dual carriageways such as Queen’s Drive - and their linear banks of residential grassland - become wild corridors, and green teeth bite further into the Swindon’s centre.

Ocotal Way wild corridor.

Vast supermarket parking becomes a wild core.

Bridgemead’s huge roundabouts, light industrial units and low density housing becomes a large and connected mosaic of wild corridors and cores, encouraging walkers and wildlife to connect West Swindon and Even Swindon.

Westlea Brook and roadside verges offer a new wild corridor, connecting Bridgemead to Eastleaze.

Extension to the Windmill Hill wild buffer.

Wichelstowe and Coate wild corridors link to the downs, drawing people out into the rewilded countryside of neighbouring Wiltshire.

The Dorcan wild core continues to grow and mature and extend its influence to its adjacent neighbourhoods.

With a preference for town centre development and regeneration, and a change in vehicle habits, housing estates at the edge of town with few facilities can start to grow into new wild cores and buffers.

Lydiard Park and the maturing Bradon forest can link, drawing people further out to a wild forest network.

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CONCLUSION This thesis set out to investigate whether the growing trend for rewilding had transferrable qualities for urban landscapes. My studies revealed that the western world’s conflicted attitudes toward wilderness are still present in modern Britain; much of our relationship to natural landscapes is dominated by a longing for wilderness. Our perceptions of this wilderness, owing much to the New World vision, is still wrapped up in sublime qualities such as huge scale and long views, however it is the other side of the sublime - the all-encompassing emotions of awe and terror, that have been lost, but are a far more appropriate and exciting version of modern British wildness.

My thesis has revealed the complexities of wilderness, and the care the rewilding movement must take. William Cronon’s arguments that pursuing flawless wilderness is dangerous due to its divorce of man and nature, was crucial to the development of my understanding of what sort of wild was fit for modern Britain. Shoard, Farley and Roberts’ explorations of Britain’s edgelands have also been critical to my response. My explorations of the forgotten corners of Swindon during the summer of 2016 was also critical to this. My preference for wildness over wilderness drew me to urban wilding, which I argue puts brownfield - previously restricted as a site for routine development - at the heart of a strategy which reflects other largescale rewilding projects from around the world. This is through cores, buffers and corridors, where natural processes, rather than ephemeral human design and fashion, rule. My explorations of the essential elements of wildness - process, animal, tree and human - wrote my informal design codes for making urban spaces wilder as corridors, buffers or cores. These could, no doubt, be refined and transformed even further: I discovered during my research that wilderness and wildness are constantly shifting, flexing their muscular meaning.

The strategy of urban wilding through new cores, buffers and corridors is focused on the future and wild creation, rather than the recreation of some past state. Only in this way can we negate our shifting baseline of how the world should appear. By investigating

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the future of wilderness in Britain, I have also been able to reconnect to our landscape heritage of Burke and romanticism. I see that rewilding can help us to rediscover the sublime through the majesty of independent natural process, awe and terror, and the ‘terrible beauty’ of the wild predator. The sublime connects us to a higher power - this time, instead of a patriarchal God figure, wildness helps us to connect to the higher power that is natural process; key to a future where we all need to understand and fight for our persecuted environment. If we can find this connection day to day, in our towns and cities, we can ensure a widespread shift in attitudes. The picturesque of a nature reserve alongside the sublime of a wild core should both be accessible within the city.

There is the potential for great landscape and social change in Britain over the coming decades. In the short term, Britain leaving the EU - with its free movement of cheap agricultural labour and generous subsidies to landowning farmers through CAP subsidies - is likely to bring about dramatic changes to Britain’s agricultural landscape, which is currently so dominant. This is likely to be as large in scale as the changes in farming brought about post-1945, but this time perhaps in favour of the wild. If CAP pillar 1 subsidies were to end, rewards for the cultivation of poor agricultural land will not be sustainable in the long term and as our landscape shifts back to favour a more complex mosaic of farm, woodland, scrub and heath, the dominant view of wildland as retrogressive can begin to be challenged far more easily. In the longer term too, the effects of climate change will see gradual but significant effects on agricultural land. With such monumental changes inevitable, perhaps it is not so odd to imagine wild wolves roaming remote Britain in 50-100 years’ time. In towns, vast car parks could become new wetlands or woodlands; outdated trading estates could be left to overgrow as new wild cores, large enough to support transitory herds of grazers seeking temporary shelter.

To ensure that an increasingly urbanised (and suburbanised) population connects meaningfully with and understands these rewilded landscapes, they must not stop at the borders of towns and cities, but bite into them. Wild cores already thrive in our conurbations - where there are parcels of unmanaged land, plants and wildlife inevitably come to fill it. The key is to allow space for

them and connect them, rather than turning them into a garden or treating them as a nuisance on the fringe of modern life. Whilst nature reserves are successful in engaging wildlife enthusiasts and showcasing a particular species or moment in time, green teeth must not be preserved - rather they should be reserved. Rewilding, whether in an urban or remote setting, does not aspire to mimic a set moment in time, but allows natural process full reign, a dynamic that in its unpredictability and mystery provokes the feeling of the sublime. Wild corridors in a settlement can take the majority of human traffic, familiarising city dwellers with the processes of natural succession through a frame of cultural understanding. This would leave wild cores as hidden gems ready to be chanced upon or sought out by only the most adventurous urban explorers.

A renewed appreciation of the wild can help us reconnect with many other natural processes that we have also lost links to, such as the changing seasons, wildlife, water cycles and even local food production. As Cronon writes: “if it [wilderness] can help us perceive and respect a nature we had forgotten to recognise as natural - then it will become part of the solution to our environmental dilemmas” (2015, p.116). I hope that my studies will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in town development and planning, as well as rewilding enthusiasts. As a landscape architect, I believe that my profession can play a crucial role in reacquainting urban people with wild nature and natural process, of which humanity is a crucial part.

Gaining an urban population’s support through engagement, good design and responsive planning will be essential to urban wilding; yet we should not forget to be daring, too.

Whilst I wait for an urban wilding revolution, I am heartened that wild urban places still thrive. They shrink and grow, disappear and reappear with cycles of boom and bust, but are an omnipresent force.

Wild natural process is the world’s baseline, and whilst I would not want to preclude humanity’s influence on it, it is comforting to know that wherever we forget to mow or weed, whenever we turn our backs or ignore, even for a moment, the wild effortlessly appears.

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13.05.2067 There are stories of Swindon’s dying town centre, but these days it is always full of life. Even in the pitch dark of night the boar clear the final chips left by the evening’s last revellers.

The revelling of chiff-chaffs, greenfinches and mobiles buzzing, babbling shop radios and swallows follows me down Regent Street.

Reaching up to me is the green haze of Bridge Street bottom. I remember some of these empty shops from my childhood, each one now home to as many beetles and beasts as a Wiltshire oak. In the untouched crumbling shop floors lay a rich and various crop of wildness, and surprise and wonder for the bravest explorer, to match the most fertile land of the downs.

A waymo flits past me along the new avenue of Sheppard Street, dappled shade of rowan echoing the shadows of where parked cars would have once rested their bodies. Swift-like screams of the electric locomotives sing. I have not explored the path that weaves off to my left, but now I am drawn down it. The riot of yarrow, vetch and oat, and the totems of bird bat boxes tell me that this is the wild corridor I had been searching for. Friends have told me of the perfect walks along this path between Gorse Hill, Rodbourne and Cheney Manor, their daughter’s binoculars dropped and broken and hands sticky with foraged blackberries; but I being alone seek the cores this path may lead to. The cries of the goshawk nest from the foot of its tree, hushing the sting of snagged skin from bramble diving. The cores hold privately riotous spaces, packed with alder and birch, fox and pine marten and the bravest summer teenagers.

I snake along ex-Darby Close, new thick woodlands bowing their heads toward the Hreod Burna , its ancient broken canalised concrete piled in monoliths, now anchors for elder and achillea.

Could the Ray’s kits from last year be building a lodge on the Hreod?

I am certain the crack willows here have been nibbled.

In the green teeth of my town lays the wild of the world. Here I converse with the Higher Power of swallow, vetch, beaver; the promise that lays within the discreet footprint of a migrating Bradon lynx left coyly in Lydiard; and the new spirit it brings to the tiny fervent bee on my garden’s tomatoes.

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CHENEY MANOR WILD

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ENDNOTES 1. American ideas of wilderness have been written about substantially and also reveal a strong religious heritage. The vast, boundary-less and settlement-free lands that Europeans found must have appeared infinite in resource and potential.

Whilst European views of terrifying wilderness would have endured, this newfound freedom in wilderness built on the rare positive aspect of ‘escape’, and would endure. From it, a distinctly American vision of the wild was born, which has in turn infused many other cultures’ attitudes to the wild.

2. The 19th century Scottish-American naturalist and writer John Muir also fails to divorce humanity from the wild: “wildness is necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life” (Hiltner, 2015, xv). Muir appears to accept even welcome - economic activity in wilderness. Perhaps this is due to his position as a European immigrant on the frontiers of America, but whatever the reason, his quote suggests that factors of scale and natural materials (such as water and wood) concern his definition of wilderness more than a lack of human influence.

3. This divorce was a part of the rising popularity of ecocentrism through the mid and into the late 20th century. Ansel Adam’s work for the American National Parks, particularly his photographs which epitomised the purity of the wild independence of humanity, helped to steer this new direction.

Garrard’s critique of his photographs (2004, p.69) show them to be highly manipulated, with filters to exaggerate contrast between sky and land, only taken on clear winter days to amplify the awe-inspiring topography over any soft vegetation. It is clear that wilderness is always viewed through a cultural lens - in this case an ecocentric masculine view. The first wave of ecocritics popularised a philosophy that rejected putting any one species (i.e. humans) above all others (Hiltner, 2015). Ironically, and despite his inclusion of humanity within wilderness, Thoreau’s writings became fashionable and movements such as Earth First! transformed wilderness from a cultural construction into a conservation strategy. In turn, the ‘deep ecology’ movements of the 1980s rejected Judeo-Christian thinking, seeing it as anthropocentric. The idea of the American frontier was perhaps harder to shake though, and can be seen as powerful as ever in texts by Dave Foreman (co-founder of Earth First!), who longs for the return of a semi-primitive way of life and a re-connection to nature through adventures in “The Big Outside” (Cronon, 2015, p.115), again echoing traditional views of wilderness as a vast and boundless place. The cultural shift in the conservation community, and even in landscape architecture, to ecocentrism is particularly well summed up by a quote from Hough who in 2004 argued “it is my contention that the formal city landscape imposed over an original natural diversity is the one in need of rehabilitation” (Cities & Natural Process, p.8) - a beguiling

point of view for many modern readers, who have probably never experienced big (traditional) wilderness.

4. British attitudes toward the wild have been the result of continued waves of occupation and religious influence from Europe; an early example of the intricacies of these influences can be seen in Roman attitudes to wilderness in the British Isles - where wild animals were mostly associated with hunting - combining with early Christian attitudes of ‘stewardship’ over the land. Medieval attitudes toward the wild would have been dominated by the church and the monarchy; and Christianity’s dual picture of wilderness - of the devil and of salvation - would also have been well recognised in Britain as a Christian kingdom.

Even from its early days as a cultural construct, this duality is an appropriate prelude to how complex and conflicting an apparently simple idea can become. Aristotle’s ‘ladder of nature’ was a popular symbolic motif in Medieval times that showed the ‘correct’ position of humanity - below God and the angels, but above all animal and plant life. Lynn White’s speculation on new ploughing techniques in the 7th century (Gold and Revill, 2004, p.84) shows a continually changing relationship with the land, even for peasants - with each technological advance humanity could more confidently exploit its resources, which would act as a tangible example of where people sat in this universal hierarchy.

5. This cultural acquisition is complemented by the origin of the word ‘forest’: coming to Middle English through the French ‘forêt’, meaning an ‘outside’ wood, the root word ‘forīs’ being the same that the word ‘foreign’ derives (Oxford English Dictionary, 2017). This root word is key in understanding the importance of forests as the archetypal wilderness habitat in Britain. They - even in their legal form of Royal Forests - possess a form of Otherness, a feeling or thing outside of normal everyday experience. Whilst both the words ‘forest’ and ‘woodland’ essentially describe the same habitat, they embody different feelings and emotions. The OED definitions of each are: ‘forest’ - an extensive tract of land covered with trees and undergrowth, sometimes intermingled with pasture; ‘woodland’ - land covered with wood, i.e. with trees; a wooded region or piece of ground. The emphasis with ‘forest’ is on vastness and dominance in landscape terms, whereas woodland can be seen as smaller, more intimate, more concerned with the trees themselves. This fascinating dual meaning, thanks to Britain’s history of both Saxon and Norman influence, gives contradictory feelings to the same habitat and is a revealing view of the British attitude to wild nature. It can swiftly adjust from threatening to benign, unpretentious or mild.

6. In the late 16th century Royal Forests began to be disafforested; the land which had often been turned over to commons following disuse for royal hunting was suddenly enclosed and gifted to prominent nobles. Upon the re-establishment of the monarchy with Charles II, a further political act would shift

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British people’s relationship to the land, as many large estates were ‘entailed’, meaning they could not be broken up as easily (Gold and Revill, 2004). Landowners had to think more long term. As a result, where before some estate land would have been left as heath, woodland or scrub, land owners turned increasingly to agriculture to make more profit from large and unwieldy estates, leading to a great increase of its influence on the land. The visual change in British landscape must have been radical at this time.

7. The Enlightenment - where the wild would have been seen decreasingly as a place of mystery, and increasingly a place to be calculated and controlled - is often seen by deep ecologists as the end of the influence of the pagan Mother Nature, firmly replaced by a patriarchal and heavenly God figure (Garrard, 2004, p.61).

8. As our industrial revolution progressed through the 19th and into the 20th century it saw increasing social mobility.

Reaction to the revolution, through the romantic movement, also saw some of the first moves to protect wild nature from man’s industry. The expanding city middle classes grabbed hold of this tantalising new movement and began to see the countryside - which they were often no longer connected to - as a place for recreation. This idea very much persists today, with the countryside - whether rural, forest, coastline, heath - as a place to holiday, camp, be active and bond with family, before returning to town for the day job. Across the western world, romantics like Ruskin and Thoreau studied nature scientifically as well as experiencing it first-hand through exploration; and crucially, expressing thoughts and feelings through artistic practice - poetry, prose and painting. As the modern city was born and built up, the artists of the day developed this image of divine nature and wilderness: “by the late 18th century the appreciation of nature, and particularly wild nature, had been converted into a sort of religious act.” (Gold and Revill, 2004, p.134)

9. In Garden Cities of To-morrow, Howard tellingly writes: “the key to the problem how to restore the people to the land that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky ... - the very embodiment of Divine love for man - ...it is the key to a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light” (1985, p.6). Such rich and frequent reference to connecting with God through nature shows just how influential romanticism and the sublime was on Howard.

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(IUCN, 2017) - and so the focus is shifted to traditional cultural impacts on the landscape, with no real relevance to wild nature.

This is the appropriate category for British National Parks, as all are predominantly farmed landscapes. Taylor criticises the designation as “essentially a product of civil society and of the expressed need for jaded industrialised souls to find solace in the purity of nature” (2005, p.12), and takes particular offence at the image of ‘pure’ nature, preferring a vision of nature that is darker, richer, and more complex. This is why he finds solace in the more emotionally charged space of wilderness.

11. Dolly Jørgensen’s studies into the origins of the term rewilding present a variety of meanings. The word rewilding was born in 1990 with the US Wildlands Project, an organisation that looks to restore “cores, corridors and carnivores” (2015, p.483) of wilderness to before the first Animal Damage Control acts of circa 1895. This detail is important as it emphasises the restoration of landscapes that were eradicated following European settlement, namely in the form of charismatic species such as the wolf and the bison. In 2005 a rival definition of the word, also from the USA, instead argued for ‘taxon replacement’, or the replacement of megafauna present at the end of the Pleistocene with modern day equivalents, differing quite substantially from the former definition by suggesting wilderness only existed before any human settlement of the continent i.e. Native American peoples (Jørgensen, 2015, P.484). Once the term rewilding arrived in European and Middle Eastern academic papers, herbivores had been given equal weight to carnivores. This could be due to these continent’s longer histories of animal persecution, therefore making predator reintroductions in particular more fraught: herbivores provide a more comfortable middle ground.

From this point, European debate on rewilding turned more to productive land abandonment and the emulation of preNeolithic forest clearance landscapes. Importantly, and an idea which is often repeated in British rewilding texts, Rewilding Europe asks for “spontaneous nature to develop, in a modern society” (2015, p.486), therefore differentiating rewilding from restoration by never stipulating a past desired landscape to aim for - the emphasis is very much on independent natural process as the future.

12. Jørgensen and Cronon’s criticisms have highlighted the negative associations of wilderness, and it could be argued that for urban contexts - where living memory would never recall the area as wild - the focus on starting afresh with the wild (rather than the return that ‘re’ suggests) is less threatening.

10. British National Parks do not fall within the IUCN category II

13. British rewilding hopes to change two broad spheres of our

National Parks, which are described as “large natural or near natural areas set aside to protect large-scale ecological processes” (IUCN, 2017). Instead Category V Protected Landscape/ Seascape is more appropriate - “where the interaction of people and nature over time has produced an area of distinct character with significant, ecological, biological, cultural and scenic value”

landscape: agriculture and nature reserves. Conservation efforts to modify current agricultural practice in Britain appears to be moderately ineffective when, despite efforts that include the ‘greening’ of agriculture through pillar 2 agricultural subsidies, farmland bird numbers and diversity are continuing to decline rapidly (Marshall, 2014). Today’s industrial farming, the

monocropping of annuals on large scales and the use of pesticides has left Britain’s traditional pastoral habitats of hedgerows, meadows and ponds “severely impoverished” (Hough, 2006, p.131) or has allowed them to disappear altogether. When describing Walden, Thoreau reminisces of a time when the pond was far richer in vegetation and wildlife: “completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods” (1999, p.173), lamenting the loss of character and decreased birdsong.

That Thoreau can still have a wilderness experience at Walden shows the power of the woods and the water that remained: despite ecological degradation, natural succession offers the hope of an ecosystem growing and changing. Because Britain’s nature reserves often emulate a particular point in history through human management, rewilding begs the question of why a certain status quo should be emulated above all others.

Because allowing natural succession to take over usually to a forest ecosystem, rewilding has conversely been criticised as only creating woodland, excluding many open grassland and heathland species which are currently protected by nature reserves or SSSIs. It is important to recognise, however, that only 12% of our current landmass is covered in woodland (Forestry Commission, 2011), that “habitats get more diverse over time, and climax woodlands are especially rich ecosystems” (Trees for Life, 2017) due to deadwood, carnivore and herbivore movements, and natural disturbance such as wind, fire and flood. Therefore a wild landscape is no more monotonous than a traditional nature reserve; in fact one should not replace the other, but work alongside one another to recover biodiversity.

14. When imagining the appearance of the belt in 1955, the president of the Town Planning Institute Desmond Heap described “a clear-cut line where the pavement ends and the green fields begin.”(Elson, 1986, p.14) This vision of the belt as rural, agricultural and open elevates it as distinct from the manmade edge, and affords it a level of purity that appears opposite to the multitude of functions allowed within the belt. This view of a green and pleasant land has stuck, with the designation remaining in vogue for over 50 years, even gaining significance towards the latter half of the 20th century when it was seen as assisting inner city regeneration by transferring the weight of development to brownfield sites.

15. Despite this conflicting history, green belts have arguably had a successful impact on the development of existing towns and cities. Both Elson writing in 1986 and Hough writing in 2004 from a North American perspective agree that the preservation of defined settlements, the retention of productive farmland, as well as money-saving on infrastructure due to more compact settlements, have all been valuable results of green belt.

16. The protection itself, though having allowed for recreation and leisure in its evolution, is fundamentally concerned with protecting its openness and freedom from mass development.

Elson notes that “in no instance...were the characteristics of

the natural resources of an area (such as woodland, landscape or agriculture) the determinant of the size or extent of a belt” (1986, p.26). It is its generic formula that has no doubt resulted in the belt’s longevity as policy; however, it is also clear that landscape, nature and the uniqueness of a town’s setting with regards to habitat have never been considered in what land is protected. What opportunities were missed through this generic vision, and what wild habitats have been lost as a consequence?

The green belt’s most lasting failure has been the profusion of satellite towns - where modern development has hopped over protected belt land and into the next available ‘empty’ space.

The consequences of compulsory car commutes and place-less developments have been well documented, and it is here that the shortcomings of the ‘belt’ shape itself are revealed, refusing to allow communities to meet.

17. The ‘human’ aspects of rewilding - such as a more meaningful contact with animals, a better awareness of seasons and life cycles, exhilaration and oneness with nature - can transfer perfectly to urban places. My own experiences within the conurbation of Swindon show this is possible: chancing upon a wild animal whilst going about daily life provokes sublime emotions of surprise and awe, but also heightens perception and provokes an appreciation of place.

18. Shoard describes the edgelands as “an adventure playground for children and imagined landscape for artists” (2002, p.131). For urban children in particular, brownfield sites are often the only source of nature, or environmental education, that is readily available. It is crucial therefore to understand the value of such places as a chance for escape and adventure, and vital that they are not manufactured with trails, interpretation boards and coffee shops as an adult might wish.

19. Prior and Brady identify that rewilding can “pose a challenge to an appreciator’s sense of place” (2017, p.15) especially if there was a strong previous attachment, and so it is crucial to gain public engagement and be flexible with plans where necessary.

Taylor identifies some of the key obstacles of rewilding as public attitudes (particularly within agriculture) that wildland is “retrogressive” (2005, p.227) as well as the widespread love of open views in treeless landscapes, and the associated rambling.

20. “An even greater challenge would be a FHN link across the upper Severn Estuary south of Gloucester to the southern Cotswolds and Mendips, Somerset levels, across to the Quantocks, Exmoor and Dartmoor in the south west, and the River Yeo to North Dorset, Wareham Forest, Cranborne Chase, Ringwood and the New Forest.” (Taylor, 2005, p.244) Though ambitious, Taylor does not perceive this network as any more difficult than the Community Forests programme of 1990 (of which Swindon has one - the Great Western Forest), and cites the M5 and M6 as perhaps the greatest challenges for the scheme.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Anon. (1959). Royal forests. In: E. Crittall, ed., A history of the county of Wiltshire: Volume 4. London: Victoria County History. pp. 391-433. British History Online. Available at: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol4/ pp.391-433 [Accessed 5 Sep. 2016].

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