Urban rewilding for sustainability and food security

Urban sustainability and food security remain pressing issues for cities across the world. Here, we argue that adapting rewilding to urban contexts unlocks new solutions for societal challenges. Rewilding is an established paradigm in ecological restoration, with the goal of restoring autonomous biotic and abiotic agents and processes. However, urban rewilding is an emerging but under-studied phenomenon that calls for multispecies coexistence and agency. Coupled with multispecies sustainability, urban rewilding can increase the operational autonomy of urban inhabitants through shared human-nonhuman co-stewardship of urban space. In this viewpoint paper, we explore the conceptual implications of rewilding for food security and land use planning across scales and infrastructures in urban settings. We then discuss how urban rewilding would particularly benefit food security across diverse urban contexts and examine some examples. • Rewilding can have substantial social-ecological impacts in urban areas. • We explore concepts, pros and cons, scale, applicability, and examples. • We suggest ways forward for research and practice in urban rewilding.