Contemporary cities increasingly demand landscape design practices that enhance biodiversity and resilience. The concept of urban rewilding has recently gained attention, yet its meaning and value remain contested among scholars and the public. Media ...
Contemporary cities increasingly demand landscape design practices that enhance biodiversity and resilience. The concept of urban rewilding has recently gained attention, yet its meaning and value remain contested among scholars and the public. Media representations often portray rewilding as images of overgrown vegetation engulfing urban space, reinforcing a pictorial and objectified view of nature. Research is therefore needed to prevent the misuse of urban rewilding and to address negative perceptions of urban wildness.
This study reviews diverse interpretations and practical cases of urban rewilding and explores its applicability within the Korean urban context from a landscape design perspective. Urban rewilding is understood as a placemaking strategy that embraces both aesthetic longing for nature separate from humans and the ecological value of dynamic, evolving nature. Focusing on the attributes of wilderness and wildness, the study examines the potential of urban rewilding as a design approach for everyday nature that enables urban residents to experience everyday nature.
The theoretical review addresses the question of what urban rewilding is. It traces the discourse from rewilding’s emergence in North America in the early 1990s to its expansion and transformation in Europe. Based on this review, the study outlines the benefits and challenges of the concept of urban rewilding. It also identifies the dual attributes of wilderness and wildness embedded in rewilding and confirms urban rewilding as an inclusive concept that accommodates ambivalent human attitudes toward ‘Nature’. The study argues that landscape practices connected to everyday urban nature are essential for expressing the duality and openness of urban rewilding. In this sense, urban rewilding extends beyond conventional ‘placemaking’ to become a strategy of ‘place-keeping’ that sustains nature in the city and an ‘creating-experience’ approach that allows residents to encounter a broad spectrum of nature in everyday life.
The case study stage investigates what kinds of places urban rewilding can produce through international landscape architecture projects. Four design types are identified: places that respect the passage of time, places that accommodate non-human life, places that negotiate boundaries, and places that coexist with aquatic ecosystems. Detailed strategies are derived from eight case studies. These cases demonstrate design approaches that respect temporal continuity through vegetation preservation and ecological succession, support wildlife habitats through ‘Animal-Aided Design’, mediate boundaries through interstitial planting, and restore water quality and aquatic biodiversity through waterfront design. Together, these examples confirm the practical potential of urban rewilding from a landscape design perspective.
The design proposal stage explores how urban rewilding can be implemented through an experimental design for the rewilding of the Yujin Shopping Center in Hongje-dong, Seoul. Built in the 1970s under layered demands for national defense and residential needs, Yujin Shopping Center functions as both social infrastructure and potential green infrastructure in the old urban core of Seodaemun District. The proposal examines existing urban and spatial conditions and presents architectural and landscape renovation strategies that maximize the site’s environmental and aesthetic potential. First, a design concept is established based on the four types and strategies identified in the case study stage. Second, the design creates a continuous experience of everyday nature along the visitors’ linear spatial sequence, presenting evolving multisensory experiences through visual simulations. Third, the study formulates a long-term urban rewilding scenario in 10-year phases over a 30-year period.
Over time, existing rooftop planters, mosses, and various herbaceous and woody species merge without clear boundaries and gradually envelop the structure in dense vegetation. As the aging concrete structure interacts with dynamic ecological processes, the site transforms into a landscape that expresses recovery and vitality rather than decay. Through this transformation, urban residents encounter a broad spectrum of nature and recognize diverse ways of relating to nature. These experiences encourage reflection on ambivalent attitudes toward nature and challenge binary conceptions of nature.
Overall, this study demonstrates that urban rewilding can function as a landscape architecture strategy for integrating nature experiences into everyday urban life. It further explores a design perspective that embraces the environmental and aesthetic value of overlooked architectural and landscape sites.