Tom Wild

• Landscape ecology of urban water management
• Rehabilitation of impacted and semi-natural ecosystems - urban green space biodiversity
• Labour, lifelong learning and decent work in urban green infrastructure & nature-based solutions
• River restoration and daylighting of culverted rivers: design, management and socio-economics
• Conditions, policies and practices enabling or hindering NBS uptake, including finance and role of co-productive, transdisciplinary approaches

My research interests relate to the restoration of (mainly urban) rivers and green spaces, including relationships with regeneration, action on climate change, and biodiversity. I joined our Department of Landscape Architecture in 2020 as the Principal Investigator for the Horizon 2020 project CONEXUS, on the topic of nature-based solutions in Latin America and Europe.

I tend to work on interdisciplinary projects and initiatives, and have benefited from working in teams employing a wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches.  My work centres around the conditions, policies and practices that enable or hinder the rehabilitation of impacted (and semi-natural) ecosystems, and the creation and regeneration of green spaces.

Much of my research has been concerned with values and valuation of blue-green infrastructure and nature-based solutions (NBS). Specifically, I have published research on the topics of sustainable drainage, river daylighting (deculverting), urban trees, and green infrastructure planning.

Prior to joining the University of Sheffield, I was a local authority Director, responsible for leading a community forest partnership, and held previous roles with the environment agencies in Scotland and England. In these roles I developed and led several international projects on green infrastructure valuation, urban environments and place-keeping. Having worked in several socio-economically deprived communities and degraded environments (North East Glasgow, South Yorkshire, North East London), I am interested in which actions and strategies tend to deliver landscape quality improvements in different places, who bears the costs, and who benefits from investments.

My approach considers landscape ecology and NBS interventions across nested scales, e.g. from the ‘micro’ level of place-based interventions through to e.g. city/regional scale plans and investment programmes (see ‘funded research projects’). Broadly, I am interested in the relationships between (i) the (co)design and maintenance of NBS interventions; (i) the economic and political drivers and constraints to their uptake or ‘upscaling’; and (iii) the governance frameworks surrounding these solutions as well as ecosystems restoration more widely. These themes are investigated through the lens of water management outcomes and co-benefits such as action on climate change, biodiversity, access to greenspace and socio-economic inclusion.