The world’s most scenic city parks, including Japanese and South Korean parks

New research from green energy experts at Switch reveals cities with the most scenic green spaces that also help cities breathe cleaner air.

The research analyzed Instagram hashtag data for parks and green spaces in the world’s 100 largest cities to determine which parks are the most Instagram-worthy, and Central Park in New York takes the crown. with over 7.9 million hashtags.

Famous in the background of many TV shows and movies like Gossip Girl, Home Alone and When Harry Met Sally to name a few – this sprawling urban park takes up a whopping 843 acres of New York City, and it plays a huge role in clearing the air of New Yorkers’ hectic lifestyle, thanks to the 18,000 trees that live there. The team at Conservancy Tree Care (the people who care for Central Park’s trees) estimate that about one million pounds of carbon dioxide are removed from the city’s air each year thanks to trees.

London’s Hyde Park is second on the list with an impressive 2,363,707 hashtags on Instagram – and it’s the only UK-based green space to feature in the top 20 list. According to Treeconomics and The royal parks, the 4,000 trees in Hyde Park remove a total of 2.7 tonnes of pollutants each year and store an impressive 3,900 tonnes of CO2, preventing it from being released into the air of London. Home to many tourist attractions, such as the Serpentine Lake boat rentals and the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, it’s no surprise that so many photos are taken of its landscape.

Track East London Central Park Hangang Park (한강공원) in Seoul, South Korea, which has 12 parks in total and has nearly 750,000 Instagram posts. Just last year, the Seoul Metropolitan Government planted 90,000 trees in the park to combat fine dust, car emissions and noise pollution.

Rounding out the top five are two US green spaces, both located in California; Griffith Park in Los Angeles, which was featured in the Oscar-winning film La La Land, is fourth on the list with over 493,000 Instagram hashtags, and Golden Gate Park is fifth with nearly 487,000 hashtags.

More U.S. green spaces make top 20 list; including, Chicago’s Millennium Park in thirteenth and Atlanta’s Piedmont Park with 241,710 Instagram hashtags in fourteenth. Meanwhile, seven European gardens or parks make the ranking; after Hyde Park in second position, Barcelona Park Guell is sixth and Parque del Retiro in Madrid is ninth.

Outside the top 10, Amsterdam’s Vondelpark is twelfth. In fifteenth is English garden in Munich, Stadtpark in Vienna is seventeenth, the Sempione park in Milan is nineteenth and the Luxembourg garden in Paris completes the top 20 in twentieth place.

The 20 most picturesque green spaces in the world

It’s well known that outdoor spaces are great for our mental and physical health, and to highlight the environmental benefits of green spaces in inner cities, we’ve calculated how many pounds of CO2 emissions each park helps eliminate air. To do this, we took the number of acres of each park and multiplied it by 55.5, which is the estimated number of pounds of CO2 that urban soil absorbs from the atmosphere.