The utilization of Szczecin’s natural potential for the inhabitants recreation

Natural environment potential encompasses such components as e.g. climate, relief, biota, waterways, all of these significant for the recreational activity carried out in nature. Such activity is increasingly more popular with city dwellers who, encouraged by new lifestyle trends, try to engage in active recreation on weekdays and at weekends. Existing environmental potential in urban areas may determine to a great extent the opportunity and nature of recreational activities of city inhabitants. Szczecin spans across a large area (over 300 km²) and enjoys versatile natural environment, with predominance of water and green areas (25% and 20% respectively). Green areas include forests with great landscape, recreational and specialist values, which allows the citizens (approx. 400 000 inhabitants) to engage in various forms of recreational activities. However, half of this area remains unkempt or not properly maintained which results in concentration of recreational traffic in the other areas, now hosting better leisure facilities though still not sufficient to meet the needs of the city’s population. The accumulation of tourist and recreational infrastructure over a limited area causes an over-concentration of recreational traffic, contributing to excessive exploitation of natural environment (as estimated, capacity norms are being exceeded 15-16 times). At the same time, even though there are several initiatives in operation aimed at integrating Szczecin’s green areas, the city still lacks a coherent, sensible system of developing and using Szczecin’s wooded areas which would benefit the citizens, as well as sustain the ecological balance of its forests. It can be thus concluded that the huge recreational potential of Szczecin’s wooded areas is used only in part. Key words: recreation, natural potential, woodland.