From control to cohabitation: Social-ecological insights on urban wildness narratives

Narratives surrounding urban green space management have experienced significant shifts in recent years. While the command-and-control approach to urban green space management was once a dominant narrative, alternative understandings have emerged over time. The emerging narrative on urban wilding presents a unique opportunity to expand on our current understandings and approaches to urban green space management. This research explores how participation in experiential workshops that engage with urban wild spaces (UWS) through deliberative methods may influence our narratives of urban green spaces and their management. This is achieved by examining the human-nature dynamics of the workshops, which employ methods of wild transect walks, storytelling, and multispecies role-playing, framed by social-ecological traits to facilitate the translation of perceptions and values. The workshops gathered data on the interplay between the participating human stakeholders. Based on a narrative analysis, the findings suggest that an initial disconnect between humans and ecology appears during engagement with UWS. Throughout the sense-making and sharing process, participants begin to connect with the spaces through sensory effect traits, such as auditory elements, tactile sensations, and visual characteristics, as they recount childhood memories and stories about the ecosystem's ecology. Narratives then shift as the workshops progress; participants move from descriptions of practical management and control toward a more ethical understanding of cohabitation. The article concludes by suggesting directions for future research to further understand the driving factors behind these shifting narratives.