The Hostile Buy-Out: The Right to Remain Wild
When a community takes ownership of a neglected place, must it also change it? Perhaps the most radical form of regeneration is knowing when to leave something alone.
The Coffee Break Read
There is something wonderfully rebellious about a community staging a hostile buy-out of an overgrown patch of ground. In St Andrews, the community group Poets' Neuk has succeeded in acquiring a neglected garden, with ambitions to transform it into a public space celebrating poetry, history and community life. When I first read the story, I loved it. What better example of people taking ownership of their surroundings and refusing to accept neglect?
Then I saw a photograph of the site, and my enthusiasm took an unexpected turn.
Behind an old stone wall stood mature trees, tangled vegetation and a small wilderness seemingly indifferent to the orderly streets surrounding it. I didn't find it particularly neglected. In fact, I found it rather beautiful. Having studied peace and conflict at St Andrews, I began wondering whether this unruly sanctuary might offer something increasingly rare in a town shaped by heritage, university life, tourism and golf.
We tend to associate regeneration with visible improvement: clearing vegetation, introducing pathways, installing benches and making places tidy, accessible and manageable. But what if the very qualities we seek to remove are those that make a place valuable? Overgrown landscapes can provide habitats for birds, insects and other wildlife, while offering opportunities to experience seasonal change and the unexpected beauty of nature.
My work in architecture and post-conflict recovery has taught me that restoring a place is not always about rebuilding or redesigning it. Sometimes it begins with understanding what is already there, what people value and what deserves to remain.
Community ownership is a powerful idea, but ownership need not mean transformation. Perhaps the most imaginative outcome in St Andrews would be a poetry garden that embraces its existing wildness, with modest improvements for safety and accessibility, rather than replacing it with another manicured public space.
What if the most radical act of regeneration were knowing when to leave something alone?
I still love the idea of a hostile buy-out. But perhaps the real revolution would be a community acquiring a neglected place not to tame it, but to protect its right to remain wild.........
A hostile buy-out against the tyranny of tidiness. Now there's a thought worth exploring over coffee.
Here is the full thinking:
When a community takes ownership of a neglected place, must it also change it? Perhaps the most radical form of regeneration is knowing when to leave something alone.
There is something wonderfully provocative about the idea of a hostile buy-out of an overgrown patch of ground. Not a bank, a multinational corporation or a football club, but a small piece of land in St Andrews, its future contested by a group of residents who believe it could offer something more than weeds, tangled vegetation and neglect. The community group Poets' Neuk has succeeded in acquiring a former garden through Scotland's community right-to-buy legislation, despite opposition from its owner. Their ambition is to transform the site into a public poetry garden, celebrating its historical associations and creating somewhere for residents and visitors to enjoy. It is an appealing story, one that challenges conventional ideas about ownership, responsibility and the right of communities to shape their surroundings. When I first read about it, I was delighted. The very idea of a hostile buy-out seemed to contain just the right amount of civic mischief, a small rebellion against indifference and the passive acceptance of neglected places.
Then I saw a photograph of the site.
It was not quite what I had imagined. I had expected an abandoned plot, perhaps littered with rubbish, broken fencing and the familiar evidence of urban neglect. Instead, I saw a low stone wall, mature trees, dense vegetation and an irregular landscape that appeared to have developed largely according to its own rhythms. Pedestrians walked past on the pavement, apparently indifferent to the small wilderness beside them. There was no dramatic ruin, no obvious environmental catastrophe, no compelling visual evidence that the place urgently required transformation. In fact, I found myself rather drawn to it. The tangled branches, the undergrowth, the absence of neatly defined paths and the sense of enclosure seemed to offer something increasingly unusual within the carefully maintained environment of a historic Scottish town. The more I looked, the more I wondered whether the place was actually neglected at all, or whether it had simply escaped our expectations of what an urban landscape ought to look like.
I should admit to a personal connection with St Andrews. I studied peace and conflict there, spending time in a town whose identity is shaped by its university, historic architecture, international visitors and the extraordinary influence of golf. It is a place of considerable beauty and cultural significance, but also one where the demands of heritage, tourism, commerce and institutional life have helped shape a particular image of the town. Against this backdrop, the photograph of that overgrown garden suggested something rather different. Here was a small space that appeared unconcerned with presentation, prestige or commercial value. A place where trees and vegetation had been allowed to grow without the apparent obligation to contribute to the carefully managed appearance of their surroundings. There was something quietly subversive about it, although I suspect the plants themselves were entirely unaware of their rebellion.
And so my initial enthusiasm for the hostile buy-out gave way to a rather more uncomfortable question. What if the most valuable thing about this neglected piece of land is precisely that it has been left alone?
We have become accustomed to understanding regeneration as an act of visible improvement. Buildings are repaired, vegetation cleared, pathways introduced, surfaces replaced and landscapes redesigned. We install benches, lighting, signage and carefully selected planting. We create spaces that are legible, accessible, manageable and, importantly, recognisable as the products of deliberate intervention. Much of this work is necessary and beneficial. Neglected buildings can be dangerous, inaccessible spaces can exclude people, and poorly maintained environments can reinforce feelings of abandonment. Yet somewhere within this familiar process lies an assumption that deserves closer examination: that a place becomes more valuable when it is brought under control. The transformation from untidy to orderly, from spontaneous to designed, from apparently neglected to visibly maintained, is often presented as an unquestionable improvement. But is it always?
A landscape that has been allowed to develop without constant intervention may possess qualities that are difficult to reproduce through conventional design. Fallen leaves become part of the soil. Decaying wood provides habitat. Dense vegetation offers shelter. Plants establish themselves in unexpected places, and seasonal changes unfold without the obligation to maintain a consistent appearance. These environments can support birds, insects and other forms of life that are increasingly pressured by the simplification of urban landscapes. Of course, an overgrown site is not necessarily a biodiverse one. It may contain invasive species, ecological imbalances or conditions that require careful management. A photograph cannot establish its environmental value. But neither can the description neglected establish that it lacks value. Before deciding what should be removed, perhaps we should first understand what has arrived.
There is a distinction here between abandonment and autonomy. Abandonment implies a withdrawal of responsibility, while autonomy suggests a degree of freedom to develop according to processes that are not entirely determined by human intention. A place can be poorly maintained in one sense while becoming ecologically interesting in another. It can appear disorderly to a passer-by while providing a complex habitat for other species. It can fail to satisfy conventional expectations of public space while offering qualities that more formal environments struggle to accommodate. The challenge is not to romanticise neglect or assume that nature always knows best, but to recognise that our judgement of a place is shaped by cultural expectations of order, beauty and usefulness. What appears unkempt to one person may appear wonderfully alive to another.
This question has particular resonance for me because of my work in architecture, adaptive reuse and the recovery of places affected by conflict. For much of my professional life, I have explored the relationship between the built environment, memory, violence and everyday life. In Mosul, Iraq, I worked on the regeneration of an urban park following years of conflict and destruction. The project involved architectural design, contractors, budgets and implementation, but its wider purpose was to help restore opportunities for ordinary life. Somewhere families could gather, children could play and neighbours could meet without the constant reminders of violence. The physical transformation mattered because of the relationships and activities it might enable. It was not simply a question of making a damaged place look better, but of helping people reconnect with their city.
Yet the experience of working in post-conflict environments has also taught me to be cautious about the language of improvement. Reconstruction is rarely a neutral activity. Decisions about what to retain, demolish, repair or replace are also decisions about memory, identity and whose understanding of a place is allowed to prevail. A building that appears obsolete to a planner may hold considerable significance for those who remember its former use. An ordinary street or courtyard may contain layers of personal and collective memory that are invisible to an external professional. The temptation to clear away disorder and begin again can be powerful, particularly when funding, institutional expectations and political pressures favour visible results. But the consequences of intervention are not always measured by what has been created. Sometimes they are revealed by what has disappeared.
Scotland is not a post-conflict society in the same sense as Mosul, and I would not suggest otherwise. Nevertheless, the relationship between place, memory and belonging is not confined to societies recovering from war. Our towns and neighbourhoods are shaped by accumulated experiences, informal practices and environments that acquire meaning through everyday use. Some of these places are recognised as heritage; many are not. They include abandoned workshops, forgotten gardens, informal paths, vacant buildings and the awkward spaces between more celebrated architectural achievements. Their significance may be ecological, social, historical or deeply personal. Sometimes it is all of these at once. The fact that they are overlooked by conventional assessments of value does not necessarily mean that they are without value.
This brings me back to St Andrews and the idea of a poetry garden. There is something rather wonderful about the ambition to create a public place devoted to poetry, reflection and the enjoyment of history. But must a poetry garden be designed in the conventional sense? Must it contain carefully arranged planting, defined pathways, formal seating and interpretive signs? Could poetry instead be encountered through the changing character of a landscape that has been allowed to remain largely wild? Through the movement of branches in winter, the emergence of spring growth, the sounds of insects in summer and the slow decay of autumn leaves? Could the existing stone wall be repaired, the entrance made welcoming and a modest place to sit introduced without fundamentally altering the character of the site? Might the most imaginative design response be one of deliberate restraint?
I am not suggesting that Poets' Neuk intends to create an overly manicured garden. I have not examined a detailed landscape design or ecological management plan, and the group's proposals may already seek to retain much of the site's existing character. Nor should we overlook the considerable effort required to acquire the land for public benefit. The achievement remains significant, particularly given the legal and financial challenges involved. My interest lies less in questioning the intentions of the community group than in using the case to explore a wider contradiction within regeneration. We celebrate the transfer of land into community ownership because it promises greater local agency, yet we rarely ask whether the first responsibility of new owners might be to protect a place from unnecessary intervention.
There is an important distinction between taking ownership of land and taking ownership of how that land is permitted to exist. Community ownership can provide a powerful alternative to speculative development, absentee ownership and the prolonged deterioration of buildings and spaces. It can enable local people to identify shared priorities, organise resources and take responsibility for the future of their surroundings. But it does not automatically guarantee ecological sensitivity, social inclusion or good design. Communities, like institutions and private owners, can reproduce familiar assumptions about what constitutes improvement. They may prefer order over spontaneity, maintenance over complexity and visible transformation over quiet continuity. The challenge is to ensure that the transfer of ownership also creates an opportunity to reconsider the values that guide decisions about a place.
There is another difficulty. Wildness is not experienced equally by everyone. A dense, enclosed garden may be attractive to someone seeking solitude and uncomfortable for someone concerned about personal safety. An informal landscape may provide valuable habitat while remaining inaccessible to people with limited mobility. Young children may welcome the opportunity to explore, while older residents may require clear routes, seating and predictable surfaces. These needs are not necessarily incompatible, but they require thoughtful consideration. The answer is not simply to leave every neglected site untouched, any more than it is to redesign every site into a conventional public garden. It is to develop an approach that begins with careful observation, ecological understanding and genuine engagement with the people who might use the place. Accessibility, safety and environmental protection should shape the intervention, but they need not become excuses for removing everything irregular, spontaneous or unfamiliar.
T
his is where the idea of stewardship becomes more interesting than ownership itself. Stewardship implies an ongoing relationship with a place, one that involves care, responsibility and the willingness to recognise interests beyond our own. It acknowledges that a landscape is not merely an object to be acquired, designed and maintained, but a living environment shaped by time, climate, ecology and human activity. A community that chooses to retain an overgrown garden may still have considerable work to do: repairing unsafe walls, managing invasive species, protecting habitats, providing appropriate access and monitoring how the site changes. Such work may be less visually dramatic than a comprehensive redesign, but it can require just as much knowledge, commitment and imagination. Restraint is not the absence of design. It can be one of its most thoughtful expressions.
I wonder whether there is an opportunity here for Scotland to rethink the potential of its neglected urban spaces. Across our towns and cities are forgotten plots, abandoned gardens, redundant buildings and fragments of land that appear to have fallen outside the priorities of conventional development. Some are genuinely hazardous or environmentally damaged. Others may be quietly supporting forms of life that have become increasingly rare in more intensively managed surroundings. Imagine communities identifying these places not simply as candidates for acquisition and redevelopment, but as opportunities for ecological recovery, adaptive reuse and new forms of public stewardship. A former industrial yard might become a place for spontaneous vegetation and wildlife. An abandoned garden might be managed as an urban sanctuary. A redundant building might be stabilised and adapted rather than demolished. A vacant plot might be allowed to evolve into a modest woodland rather than being transformed into another carefully landscaped amenity space.
Such initiatives would not necessarily be inexpensive or straightforward. Land acquisition, environmental assessment, liability, accessibility and long-term maintenance all present real challenges. Nor should we imagine that community ownership can substitute for the responsibilities of local authorities or the need for properly funded public services. But there is something compelling about the possibility of communities choosing a different form of ambition: one measured not by the amount of physical transformation achieved, but by the quality of care extended to an existing place. In a society where regeneration is so often associated with newness, investment and visible change, the decision to preserve an unruly fragment of urban nature might be unexpectedly radical.
Architecture has a habit of celebrating the extraordinary. We admire landmark buildings, ambitious regeneration schemes and dramatic transformations. We photograph completed projects, publish design statements and congratulate ourselves on the creation of new destinations. Yet much of the social life of a town unfolds in places that are almost invisible to professional attention: a bench beneath a tree, a sheltered doorway, an informal path or a patch of ground where vegetation has quietly established itself. These places are rarely spectacular, but they form part of the everyday infrastructure of belonging. They also remind us that the built environment is not exclusively human. Our towns are shared with birds, insects, plants and other forms of life whose needs are seldom represented at consultation meetings or considered in the language of property ownership.
Perhaps this is where the St Andrews story becomes particularly poetic. The community has undertaken what might be described as a hostile buy-out of the land, but nature appears to have conducted a rather successful hostile takeover of its own. While ownership was contested and plans were discussed, trees continued to grow, vegetation spread, leaves accumulated and ecological processes carried on regardless of title deeds or planning intentions. Nature, it seems, was not waiting for permission. There is something deliciously mischievous about the possibility that the community's greatest achievement might not be to reclaim the land from nature, but to protect nature's claim upon it.
I still like the idea of the hostile buy-out. Perhaps I like it even more now, although for rather different reasons. What initially appealed to me was the prospect of communities challenging neglect, taking responsibility and refusing to accept that forgotten places must remain forgotten. Those ambitions remain important. But looking at the photograph has made me question whether we too readily confuse care with control and regeneration with transformation. Sometimes the most responsible act is to repair what is broken. Sometimes it is to introduce new uses, improve access or create opportunities for people to gather. And sometimes, perhaps, it is to recognise that a place has developed qualities worth protecting precisely because it has escaped our constant attention.
The Poets' Neuk garden may yet become a beautiful example of community ownership, cultural expression and ecological stewardship. I hope it does. But the larger lesson I take from the story is that acquiring a place should not automatically mean remaking it. The real opportunity lies in giving communities the authority, knowledge and confidence to decide what kind of care a place requires, including the possibility that its existing character deserves to remain.
We have become so accustomed to understanding regeneration as the transformation of neglected places that we rarely consider whether apparent neglect might have created something valuable. Perhaps the next frontier of community ownership is not simply the right to acquire and improve land, but the confidence to recognise when a place needs protecting from our desire to improve it.
A hostile buy-out to defend a patch of urban wilderness from the tyranny of tidiness. Now that would be a small revolution worth celebrating.
Frazer Macdonald Hay is the founder of Uniform November, an independent consultancy working at the intersection of architecture, memory, conflict recovery and peacebuilding.
Inspired by BBC Scotland's reporting on the Poets' Neuk community acquisition in St Andrews: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62l4wkrw82xo
