This research reveals more-than-human processes of wilding as technologies, natures, and lives intersect; inactive wild traces by urbanisation; wild fragments eroded by industrial expansion; originality disappearance of rivers by urban demands, and cultural wilderness loss under unbalanced policies.

​

The last wilderness can be found at the interstitial margins before the city stops but where the hinterland has already begun. In this strangely termed 'rural-urban fringe' wild natures are constantly in flux as accelerated urban sprawl and more-than-human forces envelop productive agriculture, abandon polluted lands, and reconstitute identities. In the rural-urban fringe ambiguous boundaries form indeterminate spaces where infrastructures change track, governance collides, and property values rapidly change the future of these wild places.

 

The wilderness where the edge of London —— Tilbury, South of England, meets the Thames flood plain, contained by the Greenbelt, patterned by agriculture, transformed by port industries, serviced by highways and railroads - all under immense pressures of urbanisation. In this marginalised wilderness, it reveals more-than-human processes of wilding as technologies, natures, and lives intersect; inactive wild traces by urbanisation and wild fragments eroded by industrial expansion. Industry, highways, dilapidated fences and abandoned wilderness have become new wildlife habitats. They are still breathing and surviving but falling into immersive despair in the turbulent marginalised rural-urban fringe environment.

​

Marginalised Wilderness has been shortlisted for PIVOT Photo Competition and Online Exhibition, to be held as part of the Two-day International Conference: Revisioning Periurban Futures. (Oct 1.2, 2021).

​

​

​

​

​

​

More info: https://pivotfrontiers.com/call-for-papers/