An overview of urban wildness ecological research

Wilderness is the largely undisturbed natural area that is rarely affected by anthropogenic activities. In fact, fragments of wildness can also be found within urban areas where human disturbances are extremely low. Urban wildness refers to the urban and peri-urban spaces where the ecosystem is dominated by natural processes. Compared to the urban green infrastructure（e.g. parks, water features and blue-green networks, etc.）, the species composition, structure and ecological flows, as well as ecosystem services of urban wildness are basically undisturbed by human activities, so that it has highly self-organized ecological processes, and therefore may provides greater sustainability and ecosystem service potential than the artificial green infrastructure. Currently, the ecological characteristics of urban wildness and its unique and irreplaceable values in ecology, culture economy and well-being have gained multi-disciplinary attention and been widely recognized. Some scholars have stated that urban wildness s