Recreation use of urban forests: An inter-area comparison

Recreation use in two urban forests in Vienna, Austria was compared. Visitors to an inner-urban forest and to a peri-urban forest were monitored by means of video observation during 1 year, from dawn to dusk. The amount of use and the temporal use pattern of the main user types, identified by video interpreters as walkers, cyclists, dog walkers and joggers, were compared. In the inner-urban forest, surrounding settlements, schools and business areas evoked high-use pressure, commuting activities, high shares of all-day activities, more morning and evening use particularly on workdays and, overall, more workday use. The peri-urban forest was, by far, not so heavily used and the proportion of daily routine activities such as dog walking and jogging was reduced because of the lower population density in the surroundings. While the potential for user conflicts in the inner-urban forest seemed to be quite high at weekends and workday late afternoons and evenings, in the peri-urban forest this potential was only high during weekend afternoons in the warmer season, due to the temporally concentrated appearance of walkers and bicyclists.