Given the abundance of land and delay in Detroit, we wanted to understand the potential of an urban wilderness as a local land management strategy. 

An urban wild is not a landscape realized through force. It is allowed to emerge. These wilds are produced initially out of negligence, and not forethought. Urban wilds are landscapes given the space-time to actualize. In the beginning, there is no construction timeline. Maintenance is the finishing touch, a more gentle act of authorship. Maintenance here is curatorial, and realized in creative collaboration with existing conditions. Spontaneous and ruderal vegetation is selectively removed, and new plants are occasionally added to emphasize the experience of a site. 

The most charismatic urban wildernesses are often the product of war. The duration of war provides the more robust botanical tangents required for the creation of an urban wild. Self-appointed plants, with an entrepreneurial spirit and a tolerance for extremes, mix, over time, with intentionally planted species.

In regions without conflict, the placement of industry and infrastructure offer more familiar routes to the quarantine and authorship of these introverted sites. Urban wilds, and wild woodlands (or forest patches) in particular, are a widely-used land management strategy in Northern Europe, in part the result of a more resource-oriented regulatory environment.

Three typologies of wilderness-making emerged from our explorations: volcano, island, and savannah. Each urban wilderness results from the absence of maintenance and an in-migration of new botanical conspirators.

With the growing season, each site springs to life, animated by an international cast of characters. As a group of places, they offer a rich, wild pretext in which a curatorial act could one day occur.