TrackbackArea of twelve parks
This morning I went running in El Retiro Park with my friend Esteban, as we often do. When I came back home, I wondered how big El Retiro is, relative to other parks I know. El Retiro is fairly big — 4 laps around its perimeter sum up ~18.7 km (~11.6 mi), and that proved a great distance when Esteban and I were training for the Madrid Half Marathon. But if El Retiro is first among all parks for madrileños, it is not because of its size but because of its perfect location, the variety and quality of the sights it offers and its lively atmosphere.
To find out how some parks compare among them, I dug up some data in Wikipedia, and when that wasn’t available, in a few other pages, mainly from city councils etc. The image compares the relative areas of twelve parks in different cities of the world. Absolute areas are also shown, in hectare (104 m2). Ignore shapes, though.
Disclaimer: this selection of parks isn’t intended to be comprehensive or representative of anything. It’s just a bunch of parks I love, from cities I have lived in, or at least visited (the exception to this rule is Central Park: I haven’t been to NYC, but I included Central Park as a reference, for I guess it’s the most famous park worldwide). Finally, this isn’t to prove that Madrid can boast about owning the largest park. Casa de Campo‘s eastmost side is as close to Madrid’s official “city centre” as El Retiro, but in justice it could also be called a forest… Sometimes it’s just a matter of labels, isn’t it?
Richmond Park seems to have 955 ha and seems to me a pretty big park in London which is missing from the graph :)
Been there? it’s amazing, it even has deer!!!!
Mmmh… I think I’ve never been in Richmond Park. Yeah, I know there are bigger parks, also in London. But, again, this is just a random selection :¬)
We will need like eights laps to the Retiro Park if we want to train the entire marathon!…and I hope we will do!…yes we can!…..
un abrazo, Antonio…y una comparacion muy grafica, por cierto!