The quality of the natural environment of any city results from local conditions and terrain, depends on the area’s location and extent, but is also conditioned by the extent and compactness of the adjacent suburban green spaces. A special place in the urban natural environment belongs to water areas, in particular to the river with its environs and riverside linear greenery. Beside the functional significance of the adjacent flood plain, the river is frequently-especially in urban centres – the dominant spatial and aesthetic element. Promenade embankments of great rivers, from time immemorial, have become the natural spaces of contacts of people, and in many cases form the basis of local aesthetic and psychological identity. In the city’s fringe areas, the river and other water areas provide an ideal natural space for recreation, tourism and sport activities. When locating extensive sport facilities, the discharge zone around the river is to be preserved as one of the elements of the necessary flood control measures. The extent and the use of the natural environment of future cities may widely differ, in accordance with the changes of the cities and their forms. On the one hand, trends can be expected towards re-urbanisation and maximum land use within administrative city limits, which will pose a threat to the existing natural environment. However, also opposite trends are possible, which will result from the decrease of population and economic activities and probably lead to the demolition of unoccupied buildings, derelict industrial areas (brownfields), and whole urban districts. The envisaged planting of shrubs and trees in areas cleared in this way would loosen the urban structure and extend the urban and suburban areas of natural environment. As a certain compromise between excessive intensity of the urban structure and optimum extent of the city’s natural environment are presented three dissertations worked out at the Faculty of Architecture of the Brno University of Technology, which deal with the area of Žabovřeské louky in Brno.