Parks are bloomin’ lovely, aren’t they? With their lush greenery, colourful flowers and quiet serenity, parks can provide a welcome break from the stress of the concrete jungle. But they’re also great for the environment, soaking up carbon emissions and fuelling us with cleaner air. See? Told you – parks are great.
Everyone has a favourite spot in particular. But which parks are, statistically speaking, the most beautiful in the world? Well, price comparison site Uswitch has crunched the numbers to find out. By analysing ‘hashtag data’ (in other words, the number of tags each park has racked up on Instagram), the firm has come up with a ranking of what it says are the world’s most picturesque green spaces.
Not all that surprisingly, the number-one spot went to Central Park in New York. This ginormous space was hashtagged nearly eight million times – more than three times that of its nearest rival. London’s Hyde Park came a strong second with 2.36 million tags, while Hangang Park in Seoul came third with around 750,000 tags.
Now, there are, of course, certain limitations in using hashtags to measure how ‘picturesque’ a park is. That kind of methodology probably better shows which parks are visited the most than which are most beautiful. Not to mention, of course, that people might be tagging the park in pictures of stuff that isn’t picturesque. Hyde Park’s hideous hordes of pigeons, we’re looking at you.
You can read Uswitch’s full study here, but in the meantime, here’s the top ten (complete with the number of hashtags each spot racked up):
1. Central Park, New York, 7,962,156
2. Hyde Park, London, 2,363,707
3. Hangang Park, Seoul, 749,856
4. Griffith Park, Los Angeles, 493,093
5. Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, 486,936
6. Park Güell, Barcelona, 431,577
7. Parque Ibirapuera, Sao Paulo, 371,104
8. Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, Tokyo, 351,842
9. Parque del Retiro, Madrid, 324,262
10. Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City, 317,756
