URBAN FORESTS AS RECREATIONAL AREAS: A CASE STUDY IN ISTANBUL

The parks, children play areas, sports areas and the other recreation areas, which are the natural consequences of urbanization, are insufficient for the urban people in order to abandon the negative effects of urban life such as stress, traffic, noise, etc and by means of physical and psychological renovation. Today, urban people's trends for visiting natural places increase both in developed countries and in our country. Demands for visiting different natural places and the desire of receding from the urban in the spare times increase the urban forests' importance recreationally. In this thesis, forests, urban forests and urban forestry, recreation and forest recreation concepts, which constitute the basis of this research subject, were analyzed according to different sources and different bodies. Especially, urban forest and urban forestry concepts were analyzed according to the historical development process both in our country and in foreign 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 urban people, various additional values and roles of them for urbanized residence places have been stated and the different recreational usage areas have been explicated. In the direction of all these explications, the sample areas that were used recreationally in Istanbul example were analyzed and in the result of these analyses, some suggestions were developed by means of sample areas recreationally and functionally.