WILD CITIES
14 miles. Four boroughs. One living system.
Wild Cities exists to build a 14-mile connected nature corridor across East London's most nature-deprived communities — restoring pollinator habitats, reconnecting fragmented green spaces, and embedding nature into everyday urban life. It is the coordination backbone that London's first Local Nature Recovery Strategy needs to become a reality.
The public launch of Wild Cities takes place in April 2026.
Bold Ideas,
Real Impact.
Nature in East London is disappearing in plain sight — not because of a shortage of people who care, but because care alone is not enough without connection. The State of Nature Report 2023 found that 41% of UK species have declined since 1970. Research from UCL confirms that 60% of London's urban area lies beyond effective dispersal range for most invertebrate species — meaning isolated patches function as ecological sinks, where populations decline even in apparently healthy sites.
Connectivity changes this fundamentally. A 2022 meta-analysis in Biological Conservation found that connected urban corridors increased local species richness by 34% within five years, with pollinator populations responding within just two growing seasons. But connectivity requires coordination — and that coordination layer does not yet exist at corridor scale in East London.
No single institution currently aligns sites, timelines, ecological standards and funding streams across multiple boroughs while connecting flagship projects to citizen action in gardens, balconies and verges. Cities with even a lightweight coordinating body achieve three times the habitat creation of those without one. The Mayor's LNRS, published March 2026, explicitly calls for this delivery vehicle.
Wild Cities is that missing backbone.