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Moxon, Sian (2018) Rewild my street: a design-practice model for biodiverse, community-led urban redevelopment. In: Generosity, 27-29 June 2018, Cardiff, UK.
The Mayor of London plans to make London a National Park City, by increasing green infrastructure and its biodiversity, reflecting UK and EU targets. Urban areas are important habitat for wildlife, which is in alarming decline. Private gardens, which make up 24% of the capital and connect other habitats, are crucial to this agenda. Greening streets also benefits people, promoting health and wellbeing, improving the appearance and air quality of neighbourhoods, and reducing urban overheating and flood risk associated with climate change. To realise the full environmental potential of cities such as London, a new model for implementing policy and empowering communities is needed, as current initiatives prioritise new buildings and public greenspace.
“Rewild My Street” won the Imagine London as a National Park City international competition. Through architectural drawings and a spatial manifesto, it addresses the question ‘How should a typical existing London residential street be adapted to improve biodiversity and provide a model for wider redevelopment of the capital?’. Co-created with The Pattern Project, the drawings aim to engage and inform. They are being collated in an open-access, web-based resource to inspire residents, designers and councils to transform their homes, gardens and streets - through actions that have a cumulative effect. This research-led, collaborative model of design practice embodies generosity by gifting a sustainable legacy to future generations and other species; offering delight through contact with nature; sharing architectural knowledge with the public and professionals; and enabling community participation in change.
The media response to the project demonstrates how sharing architectural drawings can capture the public imagination, fostering a desire to give back to our urban environments. The presentation proposes a scalable model for redeveloping London and other urban areas as biodiverse National Park Cities, arguing for the potential of generosity in architecture to tackle urgent environmental problems.
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 4.0.
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