Recreational usage of urban forests and a scrutiny on İstanbul case

The parks, children play areas, sports areas and the other recreation areas, which are thenatural consequences of urbanization, are insufficient for the urban people in order to abandonthe negative effects of urban life such as stress, traffic, noise, etc and by means of physicaland psychological renovation.Today, urban people?s trends for visiting natural places increase both in developed countriesand in our country. Demands for visiting different natural places and the desire of recedingfrom the urban in the spare times increase the urban forests? importance recreationally.In this thesis, forests, urban forests and urban forestry, recreation and forest recreationconcepts, which constitute the basis of this research subject, were analyzed according todifferent sources and different bodies. Especially, urban forest and urban forestry conceptswere analyzed according to the historical development process both in our country and inforeign countries and the samples from foreign countries have been taken place in this study.The characteristics and criteria of urban forests, their essentiality for the urban and urbanpeople, various additional values and roles of them for urbanized residence places have beenstated and the different recreational usage areas have been explicated. In the direction of allthese explications, the sample areas (popular excursion spot places) that were usedrecreationally in Istanbul example were analyzed and in the result of these analyses, somesuggestions were developed by means of sample areas recreationally and functionally.Key words: Urban forest, urban forestry, recreation, urban recreation, recreational usages,popular excursion spot places.x