Re-sourcing the city through radical institutional enterprise entwining and embedding the rural in urban peripheries

It may seem perverse to propose considering the re-sourcing of nature in the urban periphery as of direct relevance to rural studies scholars. Our aim here is to show that this is far from the case. Rather, we seek to illustrate the likely significance of extant theorization of rural enterprise, ecosystems, and development to analysis of urban contexts by presenting a single city case study, with multiple research sites. Our study gathers, tells and reflects on a wide range of inter-connected projects – institutional enterprises, in their own right – which seek to re-source the natural within the city of Glasgow, and bring back the benefits of rurality. Our project aims to celebrate, recognise and record these institutional entrepreneurs who have become curators of our urban heritage and our future endowments: wild and tamed; natural and industrial; recreational and productive; inspirational and encumbered; shared and contested. They seek to do so as part of a just transition to more equal social context, given extreme localised human adversity.