Author: Adam DuVander

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.

In July 2020, the United States Supreme Court unanimously decided that states can require electors to support the winner of their popular vote. Those who don’t may be punished with a faithless elector fine or by being removed from the post altogether. Now, a faithless elector is not one who eschews religion. The term refers to a member of the U.S. Electoral College who doesn’t vote for the presidential or vice-presidential candidate they had pledged to vote for. That is, they break faith with the candidate they were pledged to and vote for another candidate, or fail to vote altogether.

Historically, political parties have been successful at keeping their electors faithful. But that makes the 165 cases of faithless electors all the more interesting, whether the reasoning is the death of a candidate, a form of protest, or even a simple spelling mistake. In the wake of SCOTUS’s monumental decision, let’s take a look back at the elections with faithless electors.

View Faithless electors in a full screen map

After cross-referencing Wikipedia’s List of faithless electors with FairVote.org‘s list, we identified 165 faithless electors. We note their name (if available), political affiliation, and the presidential or vice-presidential candidate (or non-candidate!) they voted for instead. You may sort the map by election year or party. Alternatively, read on for insights on the election years with the most faithless electors in U.S. history.

Election Years With Faithless Electors in the Double-Digits

As of 2016, there have been 20 elections with at least one faithless elector. Several elections even saw 10 or more faithless electors. When combined, these double-digit elections account for over 76% of the faithless electors, so let’s take a closer look.

• 1872 – 63 faithless electors
• 1832 – 30
• 1836 – 23
• 2016 – 10

The many faithless electors of 1872 were due to the death of the Liberal Republican Party’s nominee for president. Horace Greeley passed away before the Electoral College could vote, so 63 of the 66 electors pledged to him voted for other candidates. The year saw the most faithless electors in U.S. history, more than double even the next most.

The election of 1832 resulted in the first of many faithless electors who had issues with Martin Van Buren or his running-mate. That year, 30 electors from Pennsylvania refused to support Democratic V.P. candidate Martin Van Buren. Four years later in 1836, 23 Virginia electors pledged to Van Buren (for President) and Richard Johnson (for Vice President) abstained from voting for Johnson. This was the first abstention in faithless elector history.

Then there’s the 144-year gap between the previous most recent election to have faithless elector numbers in the double-digits (1872) and 2016. Ten electors worked to alter the result of the election in 2016. The electors consisted of eight Democrats and two Republicans. Now, let’s break down the political parties of faithless electors and the states they were supposed to represent.

Demographics: States and Parties of Faithless Electors

With 165 instances of faithless electing, there have to be some commonalities—perhaps location and party? Let’s go over the demographics of past faithless electors.

Electors From These States Are the Most Faithless

You know the saying “Never trust an elector from Pennsylvania“? Well, neither do we, but if the phrase ever caught on, it would be based on truth. Of the 165 faithless electors in total, 31 represented the Keystone State.

As for other states with plenty of faithless electors? Virginia has been the home state of 24 of these electors while both Missouri and Georgia have had 15. But what about the political party of these electors?

The Faithlessness of This Party is Elect-rifying

Of the six distinct political parties on the map, the party most faithless electors align with is that of the Democrats. In fact, 73 of the 165 faithless electors in U.S. history lean left. The party with the second-most of these electors is the Liberal Republican party; 63 members were faithless in the 1872 election.

Republicans have had 14 faithless electors while the other parties represented include Democratic-Republicans, the People’s Party, and Federalists with under 10 each.

Election Years Without Faithless Electors

Based on the previous information, you might think there’s at least one faithless elector in every election. However, this is not the case. There are several elections in U.S. history sans a single dissenting elector.

Notably missing on the graph are the Obama years. The elections with zero faithless electors this century took place in 2012 and 2008 when Barack Obama was on the ticket. Although to be fair, the one faithless elector in 2004 likely made a spelling mistake. The anonymous Minnesota elector cast a presidential vote for the V.P. candidate “John Ewards” [sic], rather than John Kerry. As a result, Minnesota amended its law so that votes cast for someone other than the candidate to whom the elector is pledged are invalidated.

Other notable election years when faithless electors were absent include 1964, which broke up what might otherwise have been a streak of six elections with faithless electors. As for the longest streak of elections sans this type of electors? From 1944 until 1916 (eight elections in a row) there were no instances of faithless electing. Another long streak occurred further back from 1868 to 1844, or seven election cycles long.

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There has only ever been one election in which faithless electors changed the result (1836, though even that was fruitless as the V.P. candidate, Richard Johnson, was ultimately voted in by Congress). However, it’s still cool to look back on the history of faithless electors as there’s likely to be significantly fewer in the future thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling.

For more election-related maps, read about the Births and Burials of US Presidents or the birthplaces of V.P.s, The President Abroad: International Travels Of U.S. Presidents, and Presidential Assassination Attempts Mapped. Otherwise, elect to make a map today at batchgeo.com.

If you’re attending an out-of-town class reunion or an eventful wedding, wouldn’t it be nice to see the locations you’ll need to attend in one place? After all, there are nearby hotel options and other accommodations you may need to remember. Since this information is location-dependent, a single map with multiple locations would be ideal.

Knowing how to map multiple locations on Google Maps can come in handy on occasions like these and many more. Whatever your reason, you can use BatchGeo to map multiple locations on Google Maps. It’s a straightforward process:

1. Gather your multiple locations in a spreadsheet
2. Copy and paste your spreadsheet into BatchGeo
3. Customize the multiple locations on your map

With these three steps, you’ll know how to map multiple locations on Google Maps, resulting in custom maps like the one below.

View Make a Map of My Location and Favorite Places in a full screen map

But wait, BatchGeo isn’t the same as Google Maps—or is it? BatchGeo uses the Google Maps Geocoding API to map and display your multiple locations on Google Maps. Geocoding is the process of converting addresses, cities, states, zip or postal codes into mappable coordinates. The result of using the Google Maps Geocoding API through BatchGeo? A customizable Google Maps map that doesn’t require you to write any code or manually geocode addresses one by one like you may have to do with other services. BatchGeo performs everything you need to do in a few easy steps, starting with gathering the multiple locations you want to map in a spreadsheet.

Gather Multiple Locations in a Spreadsheet

To start mapping your multiple locations, you’ll need to add them to a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Sheets. You can add up to 25,000 locations to a spreadsheet that will be turned into a map with BatchGeo Pro, or up to 250 locations with the free version.

One best practice for formatting multiple locations in a spreadsheet for mapping purposes includes adding at least two columns. One column can be for the name or title of your locations while the second can be for your location data, as shown below.

With just the names and multiple locations, you can create a basic map like the one below:

View Basic Map of Multiple Locations in a full screen map

But, seeing how you have multiple locations, you may want to make your map easier for yourself and any others to navigate. Enter map grouping. With map grouping, you can filter your map by certain markers, allowing you to focus on what matters.

With numerical data, map grouping can automatically identify various ranges so that you can filter out what you don’t want to see at that moment. With non-numerical data, it groups fields with the same values, allowing you to see the commonalities in your data. This is especially useful for types or categories. For example, we assigned our multiple locations common types like beach, coffee shop, restaurant, and workout, as shown below.

With names or titles, addresses, or other location data, and types or categories of the multiple locations in your spreadsheet, it’s time to move onto step two of how to map multiple locations on Google Maps: copying and pasting your data into BatchGeo.

Copy and Paste Into BatchGeo

Using our mapping tool, you can just copy and paste in your spreadsheet. Then, click “Map Now” which will allow you to validate & set your options. You don’t need to customize the map—if your data is simple, you can probably skip the options completely. However, they allow you to fine-tune the headings, which is especially useful if you have multiple location columns.

Note the basic options first:

• Region
• Location / Address
• City / County
• State / Province / Postcode
• Zip / Postcode / Country
• Group By / Thematic Value

Identify the region of your data, and set the Location / Address to the correct column from the spreadsheet you copied and pasted. Do the same for the rest of the location values if you had different columns with city, state, zip, or country data. Finally, if you assigned types or categories to your data in the spreadsheet, select the column you’d like BatchGeo to group by. After the basic options are set, you can scroll down and click Save & Continue or select Show Advanced Options under the basic options you’ve identified to further customize your map.

Customize the Multiple Locations on Your Map

BatchGeo allows you to further customize your maps after you set the basic options. Additional fields you can change related to the data you copy and pasted from your spreadsheet include the Title of the location marker, the Marker Description, Country Field, and Image URL, among others.

In addition to those fields, you can choose to label your multiple locations with letters or numbers. You also have the option to enable clustering for high-density markers which, if you have multiple locations on a single map, maybe a good idea.

You can even customize the map style—pick from six different background options for your map. Finally, for further customization, select your marker shape and marker color. We offer three marker shape options: the standard map point marker, a circle, and a square. Then, you can determine which colors you want to assign with each of the grouped types or categories or, select one marker color for a map with no grouping options.

Share Your Map

Once you’ve saved your map, pick a title, an optional description, determine your ideal privacy, and select the Map Mode: Data View displays the data used to create your map below it while the Store Locator is a good option if you’d like to display your data on a list that appears to the left of your map. Read more about creating a store locator here.

Then, you can opt to share your map of multiple locations with friends, family, colleagues, or even on social media by copy and pasting the link to your map of multiple locations you made with BatchGeo. Visit here for more ways to share your maps.