For many of us, the closest we get to 'the wild' is a patch of overgrown land, a forgotten railway line, or perhaps a tenacious daisy pushing its way through cracked pavement. These are our urban wild spaces, and while often overlooked or dismissed, they hold far more significance than we commonly imagine. Dr. Marcus Collier, an academic researcher from Trinity College Dublin's School of Natural Sciences, has been delving into these fascinating, human-created ecosystems as part of his ERC-funded NovelEco project. His insights challenge our assumptions, revealing a complex relationship between urban dwellers and the unexpected nature thriving right on our doorsteps.
The seminar, part of Trinity College Dublin's E3 (Engineering, Environment, and Emerging Technologies) "Balance Solution for a Better World" webinar series, highlighted E3's ambitious initiative focused on innovation, collaboration, and sustainability. As Ruth Clinton, Industry Engagement and Partnership Manager at E3, explained, "By bringing the schools of engineering, natural science and computer science and statistics together, we're creating a multidisciplinary hub where groundbreaking research and education really come together to tackle global challenges." This commitment to a sustainable and equitable world perfectly frames Dr. Collier's work, which explores how we perceive the very ecosystems we've inadvertently brought into being.
The Anthropocene and Accidental Ecosystems
Dr. Collier began by setting the scene in the Anthropocene, the era where human activity profoundly shapes Earth's geology and ecosystems. It's a sobering thought: no ecosystem on the planet remains untouched by our influence, directly or indirectly. "Just under 40, but that's recently been upgraded to under 50% of global ecosystems are deliberately anthropogenic," he stated. Think agricultural lands, managed forests. Yet, many more are subtly, or even profoundly, impacted. We find microplastics in the deepest oceans, radioactivity from 1950s nuclear testing in remote areas.
This global reality is particularly acute in urban settings. With 70-90% of humanity projected to live in urban areas by mid-century, and a significant portion facing poverty, access to traditional 'wild' nature will become a luxury for many. This leaves our urban wild spaces as their primary, and often only, direct interaction with nature. These are the "novel ecosystems" Dr. Collier speaks of places unlike anything found in the past, containing unique combinations of species that owe their existence to our activities. They are largely unmanaged. Perhaps a yearly cutback, a rare fire, but mostly, they're left to their own devices.
The very concept of novel ecosystems is controversial. For many ecologists, the idea that these human-influenced spaces can never be fully "restored" to a pristine, pre-human state feels like defeatism. It conjures images of 'weeds' and 'briars', plants we often actively try to eradicate from our gardens. Yet, Dr. Collier urges a shift in perspective. "No matter what type of ecosystem it is and where it comes from, it's still an ecosystem," he emphasised. They produce oxygen, they sink carbon, they possess their own resilience. They simply exist.
The core of the NovelEco project lies in exploring the societal values of these urban wild spaces. While ecologists debate their ecological processes, the human dimension has largely been ignored. Dr. Collier's work directly addresses this gap. "Maybe places that people avoid but nature does not," he mused, encapsulating the often-contradictory relationship. People might find an overgrown lot aesthetically unpleasing, even foreboding, but for nature, it's a quiet sanctuary.
The project, which began in 2021 and has about a year left, aims to build a deeper understanding of what these everyday patches of nature mean to us. A key tool in this endeavour is a co-designed app, allowing citizens or, as Dr. Collier noted, in a shift towards "participatory science" – to contribute data. Users can take photographs of plants and animals, make educated guesses about their identity, and, crucially, answer emoji-based questions about their emotional reactions to these spaces. This blends ecological data with invaluable insights into human perception.
The early findings from NovelEco are proving to be unexpectedly complex and endlessly fascinating. When asking citizens to co-create research questions, the responses were varied and often surprising. Queries ranged from the influence of plant colour and petal shape on perception, questions that might challenge traditional scientific approaches – to more profound societal considerations. "Are there differences in attitudes across different social groups?" was a common theme. Perhaps most strikingly, many respondents suggested these "negative" ecosystems could serve as sites of learning, highlighting a hidden positive potential for society that even some ecologists hadn't considered. Over 200 questions were posed in total, touching on gendered aspects, disability, and even racial favouritism in plant distribution across neighbourhoods. These co-created questions offer a mirror to society's own concerns and curiosities, posing challenges for future research.
A global survey further supported the notion that different social and age groups perceive wild spaces differently, a fact we might instinctively know but for which concrete evidence has been scarce. Anecdotally, Dr. Collier noted, older individuals often hold different values than younger people. Interestingly, the research also uncovered significant language barriers. Not all cultures, for example, have a direct equivalent for the word 'wild', and even in Germanic languages, from which 'wild' originates, the term isn't always used in the same way.
When consulting practitioners and professionals, a group ranging from urban planners to artists, their priorities predictably gravitated towards biodiversity. There's a profound lack of knowledge about the biodiversity within these urban wild spaces, even though we walk past them every day. We might even instinctively "pick the weed out of the ground as you're waiting for the bus."
Dr. Collier's NovelEco project is peeling back the layers of our relationship with urban nature, revealing that these often-ignored spaces are not just ecological curiosities but hold deep, unexplored meanings for the people who live alongside them. What might your local urban wild space mean to you?