WELCOME

The Wildcity Project explores the evolving relationship between humans and wildlife in urban areas. The presence of wildlife in cities challenges conventional conceptions of an urban nature divide. In the city, wildlife stages an encounter between biosemiosis and zoopolis. It reads the landscape in different ways, from other rhythms, (diurnal, nocturnal) foraging, scavenging, migrating, challenging boundaries, making home in an often inhospitable world.

The Wildcity Project investigates the demands wildlife makes upon us, in a world where biodiversity is increasingly in crisis, and urban regions are increasingly responding with initiatives to support biodiversity. We explore ways that the city reflects enduring conceptions of an urban nature divide and how we might think the city otherwise. The project includes video presentations from a three-day workshop – Reinventing the Urban: A Workshop on Habitecture for Wildlife, and ongoing research on human-wildlife relations as they have unfolded, are negotiated and renegotiated in urban areas.

The Wildcity Project convenes collaborators from academia, as well as experts in wildlife conservation in the non-government and private sectors, that include the Toronto Wildlife Centre — the leading wildlife centre on the North American continent, and AAA Gates Wildlife Control a humane wildlife removal service operating in the Greater Toronto Area.

We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

FEATURED VIDEO: Reinventing the Urban: A Workshop on Habitecture for Wildlife Feb 5-8, 2016 Nathalie Karvonen, Executive Director, Toronto Wildlife Centre on human-wildlife encounters in Toronto

“An institutional perspective on human-wildlife encounters in the GTA: conflicts and opportunities”

SSHRC funding gratefully acknowledged