The Largest City Parks in the US and World
Who doesn’t love an outing to a national or state park? The only downside of visiting these locations is that you often have to plan a road trip—unless you live in a rural area. But a majority of the world’s population lives in cities. Perhaps this is why the prevalence of urban parks continues to grow. City dwellers deserve accessible nature escapes too, even if they must trek down six flights of stairs from their apartment above a Subway to get there. But not all city parks are created equal.
Let’s take a look at the largest of these that park planners managed to squeeze into their city’s limits. We’ll identify the ten with the most acres in the world, the cities and countries with the most of these massive parks, and the easiest way to find them on the map below.
View Metropolitan parks by size in a full screen map
We plotted Wikipedia’s List of urban parks 1,000 acres or more on a map. An urban park, also known as metro park, city park, or municipal park, is a park contained entirely within a location’s city or metropolitan boundary.
Let’s take a peek at the ten largest city parks in the US and elsewhere in the world below.
The Ten Largest Urban Parks Worldwide
Football fields are 1.32 acres. Yet several massive metro parks measure in at almost 375,151 times that size. You may as well bring a tent, portable toilet, and three bottles of ibuprofen with you as you’ll be strolling for days before you make your first loop of any of the ten largest urban parks.
| Name | City/Metropolitan area | Country | Size in acres |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chugach State Park | Anchorage | United States | 495,199.20 |
| Table Mountain National Park | Cape Town | South Africa | 54,610.30 |
| Izmaylovsky Park | Moscow | Russia | 39,536.80 |
| Pedra Branca State Park | Rio de Janeiro | Brazil | 30,626.20 |
| McDowell Sonoran Preserve | Scottsdale | United States | 30,394.00 |
| Losiny Ostrov National Park | Moscow | Russia | 28,664.20 |
| Sanjay Gandhi National Park | Mumbai | India | 25,659.40 |
| Franklin Mountains State Park | El Paso | United States | 24,246.00 |
| Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge | New Orleans | United States | 22,758.40 |
| Bukhansan National Park | Seoul | South Korea | 19,748.70 |
Alaska’s Chugach State Park is easily the largest metro park contained entirely within a city’s boundaries—Anchorage, in this case. Chugach’s nearly half a million acres make it over nine times the size of even the second-largest city park. However, Chugach is only the third-largest of all states park in the U.S.
South Africa’s Table Mountain National Park in Cape Town is 54,610.30 acres. Table Mountain is also the last park in the top ten to span more than 50,000 acres.
The top ten largest city parks in the world consist of four located in the U.S. Also in the top ten are two metro parks in Russia and one in each of the following five countries: South Korea, South Africa, India, Canada, and Brazil. Now that we know where exactly the top ten are located, let’s take a look at the locations of the rest of the large city parks.
Cities & Countries With the Most Massive Metro Parks
We noted the ten largest city parks in the US and the world above. However, every single one of the 168 parks on the map is pretty dang big at 1,000 acres or more. So let’s see, location-wise, where they tend to reside.
Cities
There are plenty of cities worldwide that are home to city parks of 1,000+ acres. However, likely foreshadowing of the country with the most of these massive parks, only the following U.S. cities contain four or more:
- San Diego (7 large metro parks)
- Jacksonville (5)
- Phoenix (5)
- Los Angeles (4)
- Houston (4)
- Dallas (4)
The cities noted above are joined by 11 others with three 1,000+ acre metropolitan parks. This includes three international cities: Moscow, Madrid, and London. Plus, many cities have one or two massive parks, for a total of 168 unique cities after we counted the duplicates.
Countries
As for countries, the U.S. contains 115 large metro parks, more than any other country on Wikipedia’s list. Canada is where the next most (12) are located while the United Kingdom and Brazil are each home to four. Now let’s find out the easiest way to visualize these analyses.
Map Your Data Alongside Locations
When mapping data, you often have more than just a location. It’s easy to find insights into that additional data with BatchGeo’s grouping functionality.
With grouping, you’re able to select only the markers that meet certain requirements, filtering out the rest. Groups can be combined to zero in on very specific results, giving you insight into the story behind the map. For example, you can group our map of the largest metropolitan parks by ranking, managing authority, and size. You’re also able to set your desired default grouping of the map. See for yourself the insights you can gain with grouping at batchgeo.com.
