WILD THIS, WILD THAT: SHARED V4 VISIONS FOR RE-NATURING THE CITY (WF2V4)
Project name: Wild This, Wild That: Shared V4 Visions for Re-Naturing the City (WF2V4)
Project duration: September 2025 – March 2027
Project objective:
Wild This, Wild That explores how cities in Central Europe can bring more nature back into urban spaces. The project focuses on four core case study cities: Ostrava (Czechia), Pécs (Hungary), Gdańsk (Poland), and Prešov (Slovakia). Uzhhorod (Ukraine) is included as an additional collaborative study city.
The main objective is to go beyond purely technical planning and explore the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions of urban rewilding.
Project description:
Urban areas in Central and Eastern Europe face increasingly severe challenges—climate change, biodiversity loss, and the need for healthier, more resilient cities. One promising response is urban rewilding: the practice of restoring natural processes and green spaces within cities to improve both ecological and human well-being.
This project explores how rewilding can be implemented, adapted, and experienced across different urban contexts in the Visegrad Four (V4) countries—Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia—through collaboration with a partner city in Ukraine (V4+1).
Rewilding is not only about nature—it is also about people, governance, and culture. While cities in the region vary in size, history, and economic background, they all share the common need to create greener, healthier, and more inclusive urban spaces.
By comparing these cities, the project aims to identify both shared strategies and localinnovations that can be scaled or adapted more broadly.
Main project goals:
- To build a comparative evidence base on urban rewilding practices through surveys, interviews, and field research in five cities.
- To develop a practical Urban Rewilding Toolkit for municipalities, NGOs, and practitioners.
- To engage communities and stakeholders through local workshops and dialogue.
- To produce accessible outputs—including a Comparative Report, Toolkit, Policy Brief, and academic article—to maximize both scientific and public impact.
- To strengthen regional and cross-border cooperation, including solidarity with Ukraine, through collaborative research and knowledge exchange.
In short, this project seeks to understand how urban rewilding can move from inspiring ideas to real-world practices that benefit both people and the environment.
Project manager: Assoc. Prof. Diana Kaynts, PhD
APPLICANT:
University of Gdańsk (Poland) www.ug.edu.pl
PROJECT PARTNERS:
Institute for Sustainable Development of Settlements (Czechia) www.iurs.cz
ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies (Hungary) krtk.elte.hu
University of Prešov (Slovakia) www.unipo.sk
Scientific and Educational Institute of Multidisciplinary Research “SMART City”, Department of Urban Buildings Construction and Maintenance, Uzhhorod National University (Ukraine) www.uzhnu.edu.ua
Funding:
The project is implemented with grant support from the International Visegrad Fund, with additional funding provided by the Polo Center for Sustainability (Italy) to support the Ukrainian component (Uzhhorod).
