As of 2023, Chugach State Park in Anchorage, Alaska, was the largest city park in the United States by a long shot, spanning 464,318 acres. Second in the ranking was the Great Dismal Swamp in the Coastal Plain Region of southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina, at 113 thousand acres. A wide variety of park authorities Most parks in the U.S. are owned by the municipality, state, county, regional agency, or the federal government. Both McDowell Sonoran Preserve and South Mountain Preserve are part of the state park system along with most of the parks in the ranking. One of the more well-known park authorities is the National Park Service (NPS) – an agency of the federal government. Blue Ridge Parkway was the most visited NPS park in 2023 alongside many other well-known U.S. parks. What defines a park? Parks in the U.S. are often called a variety of names, just a few of which are: forest, reserve, preserve and wildlife management area. Sometimes the differences between parks in the U.S. can vary massively from monuments to expansive woodland. The Lincoln Memorial made the ranking of the most visited city parks in the U.S., while this may not seem like it comes under the classification of a ‘park’, it is cared for by the National Park Service.

This graph depicts the size of county-owned city parks in the U.S. in 2010. The Bear Creek Pioneers Park in Houston has an area of 2,168 acres.

This graph depicts the size of municipally owned city parks in the U.S. in 2010. The Cullen Park in Houston has a size of 9270 acres.

The city park with the highest annual visitation in 2023 was Central Park in New York, accounting for a total of 42 million visitors. The second most visited city park in that year was Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, with nearly half the visitation of Central Park, at 24 million.

In 2023, the city in the United States with the highest share of parkland was Anchorage, Alaska, where approximately 80 percent of the city was parkland. In second place, with almost half the percentage of parkland was Fremont, California, where 44 percent of the city was parkland.

The Austin Parks and Recreation System's ranking on the Trust for Public Land ParkScore Index. This index ranks the park systems of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. based on park acreage, park size, park funding, park access, and a variety of other factors.

This data set supports HE.C.2 of SD23.

View more details and insights related to this data set on the story page: https://data.austintexas.gov/stories/s/Austin-s-ParkScore-Ranking-absolute-score-and-rank/rnwr-4s4u/

*If a cell is blank, that means PARD did not have a response for that year or TPL removed the question for that

This statistic shows the cities with the largest number of park playgrounds per 10,000 residents (not including playgrounds in school sites) in the United States in 2023. There were 7 park playgrounds for every 10,000 residents in Madison, Wisconsin, making it the city with the most playgrounds per 10,000 residents.

‘Total tweets’ enumerates all public tweets posted from a GPS latitude/longitude inside that city. ‘Park tweets’ is the total number of tweets posted from inside parks. The ‘% tweets in park’ column calculates Park tweets / total Tweets. ‘Park visitors’ is the number of unique users who tweeted inside one of that city’s municipal park locations as defined by Trust for Public Land’s ParkServe. ‘Parks visited’ is the number of unique facilities from which a tweet was posted within that city. ‘Tweets per capita’ is number of total messages for the entire period divided by the city’s population in 2012.

This graph shows the cities with the most acres of parkland per 1,000 residents in the United States in 2023. In that year, Anchorage, Alaska, had the most parkland per 1,000 residents with approximately 3,022 acres of land.

Analysis of ‘Strategic Measure_Austin's ParkScore ranking (absolute score and ranking among U.S. cities)’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/d5c4f877-f0ae-4de5-9219-2a35c6aed08d on 26 January 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

The Austin Parks and Recreation System's ranking on the Trust for Public Land ParkScore Index. This index ranks the park systems of the 100 largest cities in the U.S. based on park acreage, park size, park funding, park access, and a variety of other factors.

This data set supports HE.C.2 of SD23.

View more details and insights related to this data set on the story page: https://data.austintexas.gov/stories/s/Austin-s-ParkScore-Ranking-absolute-score-and-rank/rnwr-4s4u/

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

When prioritizing regions for conservation protection, decisions are often based on the principle that a single large (SL) reserve should support more species than several small (SS) reserves of the same total area (SLOSS). This principle remains a central paradigm in conservation planning despite conflicting empirical evidence and methodological concerns. In urban areas where small parks tend to dominate and policies to promote biodiversity are becoming increasingly popular, determining the most appropriate prioritization method is critical. Here, we document the role of SLOSS in defining the seasonal diversity of birds in 475 parks in 21 US cities. Collections of small parks were consistently associated with higher species richness, spatial turnover, and rarity. Collections of both small and large parks were associated with higher phylogenetic and functional diversity whose patterns varied across seasons and cities. Thus, collections of small parks are a reliable source of species ric..., , , # Collections of small urban parks consistently support higher species richness but not higher phylogenetic or functional diversity

Three CSV files containing city and urban park information, bird occurrence data, and five avian diversity metrics.

Description of the data and file structure

urban-park-id-area.csv

The names of the 21 cities and 475 urban parks and each park's identification number (POLYFID) and surface area in square meters.

species-composition.csv

Species composition of bird assemblages in 475 urban parks (POLYFID) during four seasons: (1) nonbreeding, (2) spring migration, (3) breeding, and (4) autumn migration.

diversity-metrics.csv

Five diversity metrics calculated for bird assemblages in 475 urban parks (POLYFID) during four seasons: (1) nonbreeding, (2) spring migration, (3) breeding, and (4) autumn migration. The diversity metrics include: species richness (S), phylogenetic diversity (PD), mean pairwise distance (MPD), mean nearest taxon di...

This statistic shows the cities with the largest number of park playgrounds in the United States in 2023. There were 1,691 park playgrounds in New York in 2023, making it the U.S. city with the most park playgrounds.

In 2024, the city with the highest spending per capita on parks and recreation in the United States was Irvine, California. The city spent around 643 U.S. dollars per resident on parks and recreation that year.

Street tree data from the TreesCount! 2015 Street Tree Census, conducted by volunteers and staff organized by NYC Parks & Recreation and partner organizations. Tree data collected includes tree species, diameter and perception of health. Accompanying blockface data is available indicating status of data collection and data release citywide.

The 2015 tree census was the third decadal street tree census and largest citizen science initiative in NYC Parks’ history. Data collection ran from May 2015 to October 2016 and the results of the census show that there are 666,134 trees planted along NYC's streets. The data collected as part of the census represents a snapshot in time of trees under NYC Parks' jurisdiction.

The census data formed the basis of our operational database, the Forestry Management System (ForMS) which is used daily by our foresters and other staff for inventory and asset management: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/browse?sortBy=most_accessed&utf8=%E2%9C%93&Data-Collection_Data-Collection=Forestry+Management+System+%28ForMS%29

To learn more about the data collected and managed in ForMS, please refer to this user guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PVPWFi-WExkG3rvnagQDoBbqfsGzxCKNmR6n678nUeU/edit. For information on the city's current tree population, use the ForMS datasets.

The city in the United States with the largest number of off-leash dog parks per 100,000 residents was Boise, Idaho, with 7.6 off-leash dog parks per 100,000 residents in 2023. This is shortly followed by Portland, Oregon which accounted for 5.8 dog parks per 100,000 residents.

This statistic provides projected figures for the Gross Metropolitan Product (GMP) of the United States in 2021, by metropolitan area. Only the 100 leading metropolitan areas are shown here. In 2022, the GMP of the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro area is projected to be around of about **** trillion U.S. dollars. Los Angeles metropolitan areaA metropolitan area in the U.S. is characterized by a relatively high population density and close economic ties through the area, albeit, without the legal incorporation that is found within cities. The Gross Metropolitan Product is measured by the Bureau of Economic Analysis under the U.S. Department of Commerce and includes only metropolitan areas. The GMP of the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metropolitan area located in California is projected to be among the highest in the United States in 2021, amounting to *** trillion U.S. dollars. The Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas metro area is estimated to be approximately *** billion U.S. dollars in the same year. The Los Angeles metro area had one of the largest populations in the country, totaling ****** million people in 2021. The Greater Los Angeles region has one of the largest economies in the world and is the U.S. headquarters of many international car manufacturers including Honda, Mazda, and Hyundai. Its entertainment industry has generated plenty of tourism and includes world famous beaches, shopping, motion picture studios, and amusement parks. The Hollywood district is known as the “movie capital of the U.S.” and has its historical roots in the country’s film industry. Its port, the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach are aggregately one of the world’s busiest ports. The Port of Los Angelesgenerated some ****** million U.S. dollars in revenue in 2019.