Rewilding a city is as much about undoing old habits and regulations as it is about planting new greenery. After slightly more than a year of Rewild the City, Johannes Riegler takes stock of the actual results.
What happens when a city radically abandons the idea that urban development necessarily means more concrete, asphalt and paving in general? That is what the City of Ghent and its partners are exploring with Rewild the City. In streets, schools and former industrial sites, numerous experiments have already been launched in the first year of the project: on soil quality, planting greenery and involving the neighbourhood. The results will take further shape in the course of the second year.
Learning by doing
From the outset of the project, it became clear that desealing and greening are not linear processes that begin with a master plan and end with a park or a street. On the contrary, it is usually a matter of devising, experimenting and adjusting, sometimes even starting all over again. It is about saying goodbye to old insights, rules or design choices that encourage soil sealing, and about building new ways of thinking that we will one day consider ‘normal’.
Read all about the first year of Rewild the City in Urban Diary #1 by EU innovation expert Johannes Riegler.
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