A municipal forest or municipal woodland is a
forest or
wood owned by a town or city. Such woods often have a higher density of leisure facilities like
play parks, restaurants and cafes,
bridleways,
cycle paths and
footpaths. Unlike an
urban forest, which is located largely or entirely within an urban area and may be privately owned, a municipal forest is publicly owned and may well be outside the city or town to which it belongs. Most urban forests will be municipal forests, but many municipal forests are non-urban.
Europe
Germany
In Germany municipal forests are usually
corporate forests in accordance with Section 3 of the Federal Forest Act (§ 3 Bundeswaldgesetz). Among the best known municipal forests in Germany are the
Tiergarten (210 ha) in Berlin, the Berlin City Forest (28,500 ha) which includes the
Grunewald (ca. 3,000 ha) and Köpenick Forest (ca. 6,500 ha), the
Frankfurt City Forest (3,866 ha), the
Dresden Heath (6,133 ha) and the
Rostock Heath (6,004 ha), which are some of the largest in the world. The
Duisburg City Forest, together with the Broich-Speldorf Forest in
Mülheim an der Ruhr, the
Sportpark Duisburg and the Duisburg Huckinger Mark form a contiguous forest area of about 3,000 ha. The
Leipzig Riverside Forest is one of the largest surviving
riparian forests in Central Europe.
List of municipal forests in Germany
Berlin City Forest (28,500 ha) with
Grunewald, Köpenick Forest and other woodland areas in and around Berlin[1]
^Landesarchivdirektion Baden-Württemberg, Stadt Baden-Baden (publ.): Der Stadtkreis Baden-Baden. (Kreisbeschreibungen des Landes Baden-Württemberg.) Thorbecke, Sigmaringen, 1995,
ISBN3-7995-1356-6, p. 336.