The outstanding social and ecological roles of urban forests in the growth of cities has become widely known. In many parts of the world, despite or even because of continuing suburbanization, initiatives are being put forth to preserve urban forests, to develop them further and to make them acc- sible to the public. This volume focuses on a particular component of the urban forest - trix urban wild woodlands. We understand these to be stands of woody plants, within the impact area of cities, whose form is characterized by trees and in which a large leeway for natural processes makes possible a convergence toward wilderness. The wilderness character of these urban woodlands can vary greatly. We differentiate between two kinds of w- derness. The old wilderness is the traditional one; it may return slowly to woodland areas when forestry use has been abandoned. The enhancement of wilderness is a task already demanded of urban and peri-urban forestry in many places. This book would like to direct the attention of the reader to a second kind of wilderness, which we call new wilderness. This arises on heavily altered urban-industrial areas where abandonment of use makes such change possible. The wild nature of urban abandoned areas was discovered in the 1970s through urban-ecological research. Since then, in a very short time, profound structural changes in industrial countries have led to h- dreds or thousands of hectares in urbanized areas becoming available for natural colonization processes.

Wild woodlands as a new component of urban forests.- Wild Urban Woodlands: Towards a Conceptual Framework.- New Perspectives for Urban Forests: Introducing Wild Woodlands.- Attitudes towards wild woodlands.- Attitudes towards Wilderness and Public Demands on Wilderness Areas.- Surrogate Nature or Wilderness? Social Perceptions and Notions of Nature in an Urban Context.- Nature for People: The Importance of Green Spaces to Communities in the East Midlands of England.- Living in the Urban Wildwoods: A Case Study of Birchwood, Warrington New Town, UK.- Use and Perception of Post-Industrial Urban Landscapes in the Ruhr.- People Working for Nature in the Urban Forest.- Ecological studies.- Nature Returns to Abandoned Industrial Land: Monitoring Succession in Urban-Industrial Woodlands in the German Ruhr.- Spontaneous Development of Peri-Urban Woodlands in Lignite Mining Areas of Eastern Germany.- Ecological Networks for Bird Species in the Wintering Season Based on Urban Woodlands.- Conceptual approaches and projects.- Nature Conservation, Forestry, Landscape Architecture and Historic Preservation: Perspectives for a Conceptual Alliance.- Approaches for Developing Urban Forests from the Cultural Context of Landscapes in Japan.- Strategies between Intervening and Leaving Room.- New Wilderness as an Element of the Peri-Urban Landscape.- Forests for Shrinking Cities? The Project Industrial Forests of the Ruhr.- Post-Industrial Nature in the Coal Mine of Göttelborn, Germany: The Integration of Ruderal Vegetation in the Conversion of a Brownfield.- Natur-Park Südgelände: Linking Conservation and Recreation in an Abandoned Railyard in Berlin.