Siân Moxon says rewilding cities starts in our own back gardens. Her research explores how design and behaviour change can help people make space for nature.
Date: 16 April 2025
“We can’t rewild our cities without winning hearts and minds”, says London Metropolitan University’s Siân Moxon. Siân is the creator of the award-winning Rewild My Street campaign, and she is an associate professor of sustainable architecture in the university’s School of Art, Architecture and Design.
Her research project, Wild Ways – a collaboration with associate professor Justin Webb - investigates how people can be persuaded to turn their London gardens into spaces for nature recovery, using behaviour change and design approaches.
“Over the years, as a researcher, it’s become clearer and clearer to me that if we want greener, healthier, wilder cities, we need to bring people with us. Any changes we advocate need to work for people as well.”
But why do we need greener cities at all?
Siân explains: “we’re at a point in history where urban rewilding is now vital. By 2050, nearly 70 per cent of humanity is expected to live in urban areas by 2050.
“One of the problems with that is that human-made materials in cities create an abundance of hard, dark surfaces which both absorb and radiate heat, and also rapidly shed rainwater. And these lead to sky-high temperatures, and flash flooding.
“So, our cities are not places where we can live comfortably during extreme weather events – whether that’s during heat waves, or intense rainfall. And, with climate change, these things are only going to become more frequent.”
Siân explains that leafy urban spaces can help: trees provide shade, and their canopies catch heavy rainfall. And, of course, they are a habitat for wildlife.
Research shows that rewilding cities helps people as much as it does other species. Being in nature boosts our mental health, and calms us by reducing our stress levels.
What’s more, patients recover more quickly in hospital where they have a view of nature. In offices and schools, workers and pupils are more productive when they can see nature. And in cities, access to nature supports creativity, child development and social interaction. It is even associated with lower crime rates.
But at the moment, city-dwellers are a long way from such an ideal:
“Many adults experience ‘plant blindness’, when they no longer notice wild plants. And sadly, most children cannot name even common wildlife, such as bumblebees, blue tits and oak trees” says Siân.
So, Siân, Justin and a wider team of academic collaborators set out to pool their design and behaviour change skills to create an evidence base for how to entice people to rewild their cities, via their own gardens. Wild Ways was born.
With a brief to understand and influence urban-rewilding behaviour in London’s private residential gardens, the research project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Kusuma Trust UK.
The research follows four stages: firstly, a literature review of existing studies; secondly, surveys of London residents to understand the capability, opportunity and motivational factors influencing urban-rewilding behaviour; thirdly, co-creating an intervention strategy with London residents to promote the desired behaviour; and fourthly, testing of the intervention strategy through Rewild My Street, with support from the Design Museum’s Future Observatory, industry partner Kusuma Trust and other experts.
The team have completed the first phase and are awaiting publication of papers for stages two and three. They are about to embark on the fourth stage which will see them trialling messages on social media, to understand which narratives drive engagement and ultimately, behaviour change. Are people in their target audience motivated by broader issues about climate change and biodiversity loss, or about the health and other benefits they stand to gain personally, or in how wilder cities can solve practical problems? The team will publish their results for the benefit of other pro-environment campaigns.
But how willing are people likely to be to hand over their private gardens to nature, and to let weeds and other uninvited guests take root?
“I guess that's where I want to come in as a designer” says Siân. “While there may need to be a little bit acceptance of ‘mess’, there's also a role that design can play in making these spaces look nice most of the time. There are ways to do that by containing or framing wild patches, or contrasting it with more geometry. For example, in my own garden, I have a lot of messy log piles, but I have one that I have made into a perfect circle. So, the overall effect is of a habitat which has been created intentionally.
Siân continues: “with gardens, people want to see that they are looked after and not neglected. That’s why people often label their wildflower patches as for pollinators, or mow the edges of their lawn to create a sense of contrast and a nod to neatness.”
There are indications that the vision of untamed nature in cities bursting with life is not unrealistic. Counter-intuitively, for many species, cities are already an important refuge. Urban hedgehogs, foxes and herring gulls are more successful than their rural cousins. Studies show that more biodiversity is found in urban ponds than rural ones. Peregrine falcons thrive in cities – including at London Met itself - having adapted to substitute tall buildings for their conventional clifftop nesting sites. They occupy over 200 urban sites in the UK.
Siân says that “particularly in people's private gardens, we need to create a bit of a mind shift to help people to understand that your garden can contribute to something bigger, and that it does matter.”
And so, the holy grail is to create a network of wilder gardens offering food for birds, bats and pollinators, and through which species like hedgehogs and foxes can move, forage and make a home.
