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Okay, yeah, I thought I remembered reading that somewhere but maybe it was just the largest at the time it was dedicated. It is the second largest urban forest, and not far behind Dallas' Great Trinity Forest (5000 acres vs. 6000).
Surprisingly (to me), the Great Trinity Forest apparently also reaches pretty close to downtown Dallas. I'm not sure how accessible it is from street level, though, it looks like the city around it is mostly industrial. Forest Park abuts some pretty urban parts of Portland, so it's easy to access on foot or bike.
You had be too be careful with these claims of largest...
It's mainly marketing.
You have to look at how they are defining urban forest in order to exclude others.
The Great Trinity Forest for example is nowhere close to being the largest urban forest in the country. If you look up the definition of urban forest and you look up how the Trinity Forest gets its way to the largest it is through a ton of hoops. I think it is something like the largest urban hardwood bottomland ..... I dunno it is a ton of qualifiers. But it is really a park in the flood plain (read undevelopable) of the Trinity River. It is 6000 acres. Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in the City Limits of New Orleans is in essence the same thing ( undevelopable floodplain designated as a park. And Bayou Sauvage is almost 4 times as large at 23,000 acres.
It is just all clever marketing. But it's all the same. Just different terminology. Trinity markets itself as the largest urban forest, Bayou Sauvage markets itself as the largest Urban Wildlife refuge. Both are just areas where crappy land was left alone because of excessive flooding and eventually they started to get maintained by municipal, state or federal governments and given fancy names. I am sure there is another city with the claim to the largest urban reserve or some other term
When it comes to variety, Los Angeles. When it comes to quality over quantity… I think it boils down to preferences. Many here are saying Portland or Seattle but it’s a bias towards cold rainforests. If you want something other than cold rainforest you’re gonna have a hard time there and rather be in another city. When it comes to pure untouched nature, and a mix of large urban amenities, the answer to this is Las Vegas. Las Vegas is not only near two national parks like Death Valley and the Grand Canyon, it’s also close to other amazing parks like anything in Southern Utah such as Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Lake Mead and plenty of other areas in the raw and untouched landscape of Nevada.
In addition to the raw landscape of the inland West, Vegas has an incredibly famous nightlife scene, a large variety of culinary options, known for hosting tons of events and concerts/festivals as well as having many major sports teams. It is also has a busy airport that can take you almost anywhere, including many international flights.
When it comes to the best mix of quantity and quality, I’d have to say Salt Lake City, which has a large body of water that can be used for any aquatic recreation, some of the best mountains for recreation in the US, and a large climatic variety for desert, green grasslands (lake effect from Great Salt Lake). Utah alone is probably the best state in the US for nature in the L48 and it shows in SLC. As far as urbanity goes, SLC has multiple train lines, and a developing skyline impressive amongst the mountains around it. Is it the best urban city? Absolutely not. But the best mix between urbanity and nature, no doubt. SLC isn’t a slouching city and again, best nature recreation immediately in the city in the US if I must say.
Outside the west, the best combination is Miami as a metropolitan area.
“Cold Rainforest”? Seriously - I have no idea what you’re talking about. The diversity of natural settings that you can get within 2-3 hours of Seattle is virtually second to none.
Central Park is decent sized and a nice contrast to how urban things are around it so that it is a pretty good blend. However, that's far from it for NYC as the city has among the highest percentages of land reserved for greenspace among US cities and there's a wide variety of flatlands, islands, hilly terrains, swamps, forests, beaches, riverfronts, and oceanfronts within city boundaries. It's a peninsula and multiple islands of various sizes, so you run into quite a lot of variety.
I'd be interested to see some links or stats. I've been to NYC many times and lived there temporarily, and I find it a joke to think that there is much connection to nature in the city itself. I'm not sure what they are calling designated greenspace in the thing you're referring to, but I doubt most of it is readily accessiible nature areas.
I'd be interested to see some links or stats. I've been to NYC many times and lived there temporarily, and I find it a joke to think that there is much connection to nature in the city itself. I'm not sure what they are calling designated greenspace in the thing you're referring to, but I doubt most of it is readily accessiible nature areas.
I think the trust for public land used to break things down by percentage more and had a different methodology perhaps, but NYC when they did do that used to be set pretty high. Mind you, that's city limits which are a bit arbitrary. They're counting all greenspace though so even parks with playgrounds count. There are a lot of parks in NYC though including very sizable ones close to lots of people, it's just that it's rare to visit them if you're not living near them. Nature's weirdly accessible from NYC and I think that has to do with lots of estates of formerly very wealthy people and NYS having been one of the main pushers of state parks before there were national parks. You can even take a commuter rail train and get dropped off at a trailhead. These definitely aren't what people visit NYC for, but when you live here for a while you start doing more of it. I do wish that more of the surrounding suburbs, specifically Long Island, had been preserved for nature though.
Location: Miami (prev. NY, Atlanta, SF, OC and San Diego)
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No mention of San Francisco?….bay, ocean, hills, Golden Gate Park, Angel Island, Mount Sutro, bluffs…if including metro, just across the Golden Gate Bridge are Marin Headlands, Muir Woods and Mt Tamalpais. Angel Island and Marin have deer. Seals.
Last edited by elchevere; 10-30-2021 at 12:02 PM..
You had be too be careful with these claims of largest...
It's mainly marketing.
You have to look at how they are defining urban forest in order to exclude others.
The Great Trinity Forest for example is nowhere close to being the largest urban forest in the country. If you look up the definition of urban forest and you look up how the Trinity Forest gets its way to the largest it is through a ton of hoops. I think it is something like the largest urban hardwood bottomland ..... I dunno it is a ton of qualifiers. But it is really a park in the flood plain (read undevelopable) of the Trinity River. It is 6000 acres. Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in the City Limits of New Orleans is in essence the same thing ( undevelopable floodplain designated as a park. And Bayou Sauvage is almost 4 times as large at 23,000 acres.
Exactly
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