Ghibli Hills

""They say he is already in the forest of Arden, and a many merry men with him; and there they live like the old Robin Hood of England: they say many young gentlemen flock to him every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.""

- William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Often paired with Adventure Towns in anime, this area consists of the entire relatively pristine wilderness outside of The City. Urban sprawl is not much of an issue, especially if you just start building your cities up (or underground). An hour's drive from your house can take you to a place that's virtually a national park. Cue the stirring overworld music!

It's a hiker's dream. This might be a result of historically good city planning, although a story taking place After the End might imply a disaster hit the place and it's just regrowing after the humans vacated.

If humans do live there, but it is still idyllic, it is Arcadia—which, indeed, often lies by the Ghibli Hills.

Of course, despite its soothing grass, great blue skies and small animals, Ghibli Hills is still a lawless wilderness, crawling with wandering monsters, highwaymen and wild magic. Hence, it is subject to what is known as Ayn Rand's Revenge. See also The Lost Woods. Though it may also serve as the Good landscape, in contrast with the Evil Is Deathly Cold Shadowland, Grim Up North.

In most anime, especially with ones trying to deliver a message, this speaks to the nostalgia of many older directors for the traditional Japanese countryside that largely no longer exists because of urbanization. One historical western equivalent is Merry England for historical settings. Other times the pristineness is explained by alternate history, particularly the avoidance of major conflict or wars which lets people concentrate on improving themselves.

Named for the lush, friendly settings of Studio Ghibli films. Which largely stems from the fact that Mitaka and Musashino, Tokyo's affluent residential suburbs where the studio itself is headquartered, generally have exactly that kind of scenery.

Sometimes overlaps with Scenery Porn but contrasted with Scenery Gorn. Compare to Wild Wilderness if it's a modern setting set in large wilderness areas like the North Western United States or Black Forest area of Germany. Video Games have Green Hill Zone, their own version of this trope.

The polar opposite would be Mordor or Polluted Wasteland... or perhaps City Planet.

Real Life examples have their own page.

Anime and Manga

 * Like most anime with RPG roots, the universe of Pokémon has a literal overworld, with the characters heading through Ghibli Hills frequently.
 * The future in Sailor Moon seems to be a bright city, surrounded by nothing but green.
 * See, of course, Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and, to a lesser extent, Porco Rosso and Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Interestingly, Miyazaki's first feature Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind has no Ghibli Hills, being set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland instead.
 * Also Howls Moving Castle and Ponyo to a lesser extents. There are very indulgent shots of the ocean and mountains, but they are significantly shorter and occur less often in other Studio Ghibli films.
 * Kiki's Delivery Service is a more western equivalent, with the suggestion that it takes place in a sort of European setting where World War Two never happened.
 * Kino's Journey
 * Also used more darkly in Isao Takahata's tanuki story Pom Poko. The tanuki (raccoons in the English dub) start out living happily in the Tama Hills west of Tokyo until the city starts encroaching on their territory. Soon the tanuki are forced to use their legendary powers of illusion in an increasingly desperate struggle to protect their forests, even going so far as to reveal their fantastical existence in a final plea for the environment. In the end  Ironically, the next Studio Ghibli film, Whisper of the Heart is set in the very same Tama New Town suburb created by this development.
 * In Ranma 1/2, anywhere in Japan that isn't Nerima is presented as Ghibli-esque landscape (until Ranma and co finish trashing it, that is).
 * It seems that all of Japan is scenic mountains and valleys in Mushishi, which seems to draw other influences from Miyazaki as well. This is largely justified, as it is set in the past, much of Japan IS mountains, and mushi live in all sorts of locations.
 * In One Piece, Luffy's hometown of Gao Island has Ghibli Hills between Windmill Village and the depressingly disgusting garbage city, lying outside the nobles' city. It's here that the mountain bandits thrive and Luffy spends most of his time with Ace and Sabo.

Film

 * Western example: Mufasa's kingdom in The Lion King is like a Ghibli Savanna, which later becomes Mordor once Scar takes over the throne.
 * Some of the filler bits (and by 'filler bits' I mean the scenes between zombie attacks) in 28 Days Later show nice greenery, flowers/hallucinogenic visions, and horses running about in the wild. Even the ruins of Manchester are photogenic. Maybe England's just like that sometimes. Special.
 * The future city in Meet the Robinsons is surrounded by lush green hills under blue skies, with the Robinsons house atop one of the hills. In the Bad Future controlled by Doris, the city becomes an overindustrialized Crapsack World.
 * Naboo in Star Wars Episodes I and II has huge tracts of forest, swamp and grassland. Only one major city (Theed) is ever seen on-screen. (Well, there's the Gungan City of Otoh Gunga, but since it's underwater it doesn't make an impact on the scenery.) The climactic battle between the Droid Army and the Gungans takes place on the grassy plain outside Theed.
 * If by "outside Theed" you mean like the Himalayan Mountains are outside New York City. The grassy plain is supposed to be closer to the Gungan swamps.
 * The Gungan capital is implied to be nearly on the opposite side of Naboo from Theed (given references to traveling through 'the core' to get from one to the other). The battle plain cannot be that far from Theed, however, as it is clearly daytime in both at the same time.
 * The Gungan swamps are also Bubblegloop Swamp.

Folklore

 * Robin Hood and his Merry Men live in the wilderness of Sherwood Forest—always.
 * King Arthur's knights would go off on adventure in the wilderness for the chance at knightly deeds.

Literature

 * The lushly-described hills of Andelain in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are brimming with beauty and niceness. They are not entirely safe from monsters, just enough to give a real nasty surprise when monsters do appear.
 * Almost everywhere in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but especially Rhovanion/Wilderland/"The Wild", which as the name suggests lacks much organised government. The appendices explain this is because it was depopulated by plagues and wars.
 * The Hundred Acre Wood in the Winnie the Pooh books.
 * Lovingly described in Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men. In this, they're actual hills.
 * In the works of Arthur Machen, nature is home to dark secrets and hidden horrors, such as the Little People and the Great God Pan.
 * In Gene Stratton Porter's The Song of the Cardinal, the story opens with exalting descriptions of the Limberlost's lushness and fertility with its birds, flowers, berries for the birds to eat, and beasts. Freckles also features it, less centrally, once Freckles Face Your Fears, and A Girl of the Limberlost. It does, however, feature poisonous snakes that can be quite dangerous.

Live Action TV

 * Footage originally shot for the first pilot of Star Trek: The Original Series, and recycled in the two-part episode "The Menagerie", suggests that many of Trek-era Earth's cities are surrounded by 50-mile-wide parkland zones. They later went with this idea in Star Trek: The Next Generation and subsequent series.
 * Given fast, cheap, scalable air transport (not to mention teleportation for more urgent trips), the presumption is that suburbs disappeared.

Newspaper Comics

 * Calvin's backyard in Calvin and Hobbes is a gigantic pristine forest. This serves as a backdrop for wagon strips, sledding strips, snow sculpture strips, and many strips simply have Calvin and Hobbes carrying a conversation while going for a walk through the forest.

Tabletop Games

 * In Dungeons and Dragons cosmology, the Outer Plane of the Beastlands, on the Neutral Good/Chaotic Good border, is an endless, idyllic forest that embodies many of the better sides of untamed nature. It's pretty much paradise for good-aligned Nature Heroes, intelligent animals and demihumans.
 * Another good example is Shurrock, one side of the two-sided Lawful Good/Neutral Good plane of Bytopia (contrasting its twin Dorthion).
 * A lot of lands that generate green mana in Magic: The Gathering have a Ghibli Hills feel to them.

Theater

 * In Shakespeare's As You Like It, the exiled duke, and later his daughter and niece, take refuge in the Forest of Arden. In fact, by the end of the play, so many people have taken refuge in the Forest of Arden that the usurping duke sets out to take it by force. (He doesn't get far.) Despite the population explosion, the forest proper remains a Ghibli Hills, pristine except for Orlando's carvings of love on the trees... It has more than a touch of Arcadia about it, as witness that the daughter is able to buy out a man's flocks of sheep.

Video Games

 * Final Fantasy XI has the forest of Ronfaure as San d'Oria's easiest outside area. However, it also has the barren wasteland of Gustaberg and the savanna of Sarutabaruta for Bastok and Windurst, respectively. As San d'Oria is in some ways the most typical RPG setting, the Ronfaure = Ghibli Hills scenario still works.
 * Final Fantasy XII features Tchita Uplands and Cerobi Steppe, which are relatively untamed despite being just outside the bustling imperial capital of Archades and the port of Balfonheim, and also full of relatively high-level monsters.
 * Justified in Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, where humans are literally incapable of developing outside of a set boundary due to miasma.
 * Both Cyrodiil and Morrowind in the Elder Scrolls series feature large tracts of unspoiled wilderness between cities and towns. While some areas veer more towards Arcadia, most of the countryside remains wild and untamed.
 * The wilderness areas of Cryodiil in Oblivion are, however, actually patrolled by the Imperial Legion, so it's not entirely untamed wilderness.
 * Inverted in While it looks like something from Ghibli Hills, it's anything but.
 * And Morrowind is a sort of reverse of the above—while there aren't a whole lot of guards (or "people") in certain areas of the game world, some areas themselves aren't too pleasant, either, ranging from ashstorm-covered deserts to areas of hardened (and not-so-hardened, for the very misfortunate) volcanic lava.
 * Mulgore and Nagrand in World of Warcraft (although Nagrand is considerably weirder than most examples of this trope).
 * Don't forget the Emerald Dream, which is the physical representation of what the entire world would have been like had the sentient races never existed.
 * Howling Fjord and Grizzly Hills, Borean Tundra and Sholazar Basin in Northrend could also fit. The two former and two latter adjacent zones are on either side of the continent and have been left mostly untouched, separated by Icecrown to the north and Dragonblight in the south.
 * The Dragonshrine areas of the Dragonblight are special cases. They are small pockets of areas sacred to the different Dragonflights and under their protection from the wasteland that covers most of the Dragonblight.
 * The Emerald Dragonshrine is protected by Alystros and Ysera of the Green Dragonflight and remains a pristine eden-like garden.
 * The Ruby Dragonshrine was under the protection of Dahlia Suntouch. Her murder has left the Ruby Dragonshire open to assault by the Scourge, although it is still strongly defended by the Ruby Dragonflight and still retains much of its sylvan environment.
 * The Bronze Dragonshrine is under serious assault by the Infinite Dragonflight. It's uncertain if the desert-like environment is its natural state or a result of the constant attacks.
 * The Obsidian Dragonshrine is a charred and smouldering cave, which is probably just fine with the Black Dragonflight, although it has been invaded by members of the Cult of the Damned who are using it as a base for raising undead dragons.
 * The Azure Dragonshrine has been entirely corrupted repurposed by Malygos and the Blue Dragonflight and used as a focus for Malygos' plans to siphon the magic from Azeroth.
 * Grand Theft Auto San Andreas featured expansive rural and unpopulated areas in stark contrast to the series' dense urban mainstay (though it has that too).
 * This turns out to be in Persona 4.
 * Both Fable games have landscapes like this in between cities, except in places that are near places of evil, such as Wraithmarsh and Darkwood.
 * The First Town in The Witcher is a subversion of this. The village of Murky Waters appears later than half-way through the game. Though ominously named, it's the most peaceful place in the game, filled with beautiful rolling hills, pleasant people who actually respect and appreciate witchers, and light, optional action.
 * Backyard Football 2006 has a forest stage, uninhabited by humans, that is right next to the city.
 * Pokémon, quite frequently. Consider, for example, the Ilex Forest which is just a stone's throw from the metropolis Goldenrod City. Generation III in particular takes this trope and turns it Up to Eleven.
 * Gensokyo, the setting of Touhou, is this.
 * The popular MMORPG Mabinogi. Every. Single. Place. In. The. World. It's a shame, even, that some of the more well-designed areas serve little purpose, some fans wander them just to see what's there.
 * The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Skyrim do a good job of depicting Tamriel like this.

Web Comics

 * In Annyseed you have only to cross the road from the school yard, and there you are, in an untouched woodland paradise.
 * The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob has Pitcheresk Forest, a lush woodland that exists just outside the main setting of Generictown. Described as "where refugees and wanderers seem to wind up, hereabouts." It is very beautiful but easy to get lost in. It has at least one dangerous bear and a hidden village of Bigfeet. Spending much time in the place seems to cause Character Development.
 * Most of the wilderness we've seen in Our Little Adventure is portrayed this way.

Western Animation

 * Samurai Jack: for a world controlled for hundreds of years by an evil wizard that supposedly sucked the earth dry of resources, there seems to be an unbelievable amount of unspoiled wilderness between the huge futuristic cities.
 * Avatar: The Last Airbender: The city of Ba Sing Se has a large agrarian zone between the outer wall and the city proper that looks like it would come straight out of a Studio Ghibli film (which is weird considering it's a barren wasteland right outside the wall).
 * It's likely that Earthbending has agricultural applications which makes this possible.
 * It's also noted in the DVD Commentary that the Fire Nation (which is geographically based on Iceland) looks a lot better than it should considering the people have been strip mining it for over a hundred years.
 * The animated movie of Watership Down is this trope incarnate.
 * "The Rite of Spring" in Fantasia.
 * Even more so, the "Firebird Suite" in Fantasia 2000.
 * The Secret of Kells. Though the ENTIRE film could suffice, Brendan's first visit to the forest definitely counts, particularly after he meets Aisling.