Abstract: Compared with the national parks located in remote areas, those situated around metropolises benefit from their proximity to tourist attractions, closer ties with the urban development, and the involvement of more stakeholders in planning and management. However, the strong demand for leisure tourism in urban areas, coupled with large scale of leisure tourism demand, requires a careful balance between ecological protection and urban service functions. The experience of construction and management “urban national parks” and “national urban parks” such as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, the Gateway National Recreation Area in New York, and the Rouge National City Park in Canada has shown that, a sustainable path of development for national parks around metropolises entails in-depth exploration of natural ecological resources, overall planning and layout of ecological protection and urban service function space, creation of a diversified urban recreation service system, and establishment of a unified, standardized, and efficient management mechanism while fully considering ecological protection. This study intended to provide reference ideas and relevant suggestions for the construction of national parks around qualified metropolises in China by analyzing and summarizing typical international cases.