Refined Wilding and Urban Rewilding: Nature-Based Solutions for Resilient and Sustainable Cities

Traditional urban development has often prioritized grey infrastructure, leading to fragmented ecosystems and degraded natural environments. While urban greening initiatives have grown in recent years, many remain limited in scope or fail to address deeper ecological connectivity and functionality. Refined wilding and urban rewilding respond to these shortcomings by reframing the integration of nature in cities. Refined wilding emphasizes the design of biodiverse and connected urban green spaces (or UGS) that deliver ecological and social benefits while lowering maintenance needs. Urban rewilding brings attention to restoring ecological processes and deploying nature-based solutions (or NbS) that mitigate environmental risks and create opportunities for ecological and cultural renewal. Together, these approaches advance a shift from piecemeal interventions to systemic strategies that view cities as dynamic socio-ecological systems capable of fostering resilience, sustainability, and human well-being.

Urban areas face mounting pressures from climate change, biodiversity loss, and socio-economic inequalities. Yet, cities also hold immense potential to pioneer ecological renewal and sustainability solutions. Two complementary approaches — refined wilding and urban rewilding — provide powerful frameworks for reimagining the role of nature in urban environments. Refined wilding emphasizes the optimization of interdisciplinary knowledge to design and manage functionally biodiverse urban green spaces that are connected, resilient, and beneficial for both humans and ecosystems. Urban rewilding, in parallel, advances the restoration of ecological processes and the integration of nature-based solutions that build resilience, enhance ecosystem services, and foster new human–nature relationships.

This Research Topic seeks to consolidate and advance both perspectives, creating a platform for dialogue across ecology, urban planning, governance, and community engagement. By examining synergies, challenges, and opportunities, we aim to provide a roadmap for how refined wilding and rewilding can contribute to more sustainable, biodiverse, and resilient cities worldwide.

This Research Topic welcomes theoretical, empirical, methodological, and applied contributions that engage with refined wilding, urban rewilding, and nature-based solutions across diverse global contexts. We are particularly interested in conceptual papers that develop frameworks linking these approaches to sustainable urbanism; studies that investigate design and planning strategies to enhance ecological connectivity, multifunctionality, and resilience across urban green spaces and broader landscapes; and research on governance and policy innovations, including participatory models and cross-sectoral collaboration. Contributions may also address the socio-cultural and health dimensions of these approaches, exploring how refined wilding and rewilding influence human well-being, equity, and community engagement.

Case studies and comparative analyses are welcome, especially where they illustrate successes, challenges, and lessons learned in practice. The case studies can apply the approaches of refined wilding, rewilding and nature-based solutions (in an urban setting), highlighting strengths and weaknesses of each approach applied or of the analysed cases. Finally, we encourage forward-looking work on scaling strategies, digital tools, monitoring systems, ecological assessments and plans, human reality assessments for feasibility and planning, and the economic valuation of urban ecological interventions. Manuscripts may take the form of Original Research, Reviews, Methods, Policy Briefs, Perspectives, or Opinion pieces.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: refined wilding, urban green spaces, urban ecosystems, urban rewilding, ecological connectivity, human-nature relationships, nature-based solutions (NbS), sustainable urban development

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.