This thesis examines the practical integration of urban wilderness into spatial planning and design, aiming to establish actionable knowledge through a pattern language that supports ecologically driven and perceptually engaging urban environments. The thesis systematically explores four interconnected aspects: clarifying the conceptual foundations of urban wilderness in the urban planning and design discipline; investigating its spatial features and user perceptions; synthesizing design knowledge into structured wilderness design patterns; and validating their applicability through expert interviews and collaborative design experiments....

Numerous studies show the benefits of wilderness to humans and the environment. Therefore, preserving and developing wilderness areas within urban settings are crucial to combat and mitigate challenges like biodiversity decline resulting from urbanization. According to previous studies, human-wilderness interactions can be contradictory, e.g., relaxing while feeling anxious and insecure. How individuals perceive and comprehend intentional urban wilderness, what dimensions contribute to their perceptions, and how these dimensions influence the visitors’ perceptions remain to be investigated. Selecting Jiangyangfan Ecological Park (Hangzhou, China) as a survey case, this research investigates if and how people perceive intentionally incorporated and designed urban wilderness and how various dimensions of attributes shape their perceptions. This study identified three dimensions that may contribute to visitors’ perceptions of the urban wilderness; namely, cognitive landscape attributes, perceived environmental attributes, and their visitation experience. A mixed-method approach was employed using a questionnaire, mental maps, and environmental behaviour observation as diverse data sources to assess visitors’ urban wilderness perceptions and comprehension from the three dimensions. Results indicate a high propensity to visit the park as an urban wilderness. Our findings also revealed that visitors’ perceptual environmental attributes, e.g., the existence of vegetation and waterbodies and encounters with wild animals, as well as their visit experiences, e.g., their satisfaction with the visit and their motivation for experiencing nature, significantly influence their perceptions. In contrast, prior knowledge and experience-based cognition of urban wilderness attributes showed no significant influence on their perceptions. Moreover, attributes like plant diversity, water visibility, and plant density emerged as critical factors shaping visitors’ perceptions. These findings underscore the importance of considering visitors’ on-site perception of environmental attributes and actual visit experience when assessing the value and acceptability of urban wilderness areas. Future implications of this study for urban wilderness planning and management were also discussed.

While the wilderness conservation movement continues to grow on an international scale, a wilderness conservation system is steadily being established in China. However, as urbanization continues to accelerate, the exploitation of natural wilderness spaces in cities is inevitable. How to preserve and design wilderness as much as possible within the expanding city limits has become an issue of concern for urban planners and landscape architects in China. After reviewing the background and research progress of urban wilderness-related topics, the practical experience of urban wilderness in the Netherlands is explored. Three representative cases of different scales and types are selected to analyze the background, design considerations and site functions respectively. The four principles of nature first, wilderness protection, human intervention control and public participation are summarized, and design strategies for urban wilderness landscape at different scales in Chinese context are extracted, providing international experience for the construction of Chinese wilderness system.