The Largest Urban Parks In The World

Public parks are an integral part of the urban environment in modern cities. The first community sponsored parks were created in Britain in the 1840s, but surprisingly enough the largest parks in the world today are not even in Europe.

• The crown of the largest urban park in the world belongs to Serra da Cantareira located in the outskirts of Sao Paolo in Brazil. The park covers a territory of 160 124 acres (nope, not a typo). The park is located to the immediate north of the city, and it is really popular with locals who come to enjoy the trails and paths that run through all corners of the park like a spider’s web. Pico do Jaraguá is the highest point of Sao Paolo. Serra da Cantareira is also the place where the plane of the famous Brazilian rock band Mamonas Assassinas crashed, respectively it has become a place of vigils and remembrances too.
• Another major urban park, this time spanning at the modest 74 131 acres is to be found in the city of Guadalajara in Mexico. It is of course the Bosque de la Primavera national park, which is considered to be the best urban park in Latin America. Guadalajara is primarily a tourist destination, and as such the park is visited frequently by tourists as well as the usual suspects – the locals.
• Table Mountain National Park is the vastest urban park in Africa. Located in Cape Town in South Africa, it covers 60 070 acres. It was built with the idea of protecting the natural diversity of the eponymous Table Mountain. The place is so vast that you will actually forget that you are in an urban park while you are walking about the many trails.
• The only urban park that makes it to the top ten and is located in Europe is the 28 717 acresLosiny Ostrov National Park in Moscow, Russia. It is the first national park in Russia and after Table Mountain and Pedra Blanca in Rio de Janeiro, it is actually the third largest forest located within a city in the world. In the past the territory of the park was a hunting area that was preserved exclusively for the nobility and the Russian tsar. The park itself was created by the power of a government act in 1987.
• Sanjay Gandhi National Park in the state of Mumbai, India is another major open space in an urban environment. It covers a little over 25 000 acres, and offers visitors great scenery and exotic wildlife particularly appealing to tourists who visit the state.

Curiously enough, even though Britain was home to the first public parks in history, only three of the present day urban spaces in the country make it to the list of areas of more than 1000 acres – Sutton Park in Birmingham, Richmond Park and Bushy Park in London. The trend, as explained by man and van experts, is that those areas contain the most desirable residential properties in their respective cities.