Maps: Griffith Park Would Totally Dwarf Other Cities Around The World

Griffith Park is one of largest urban parks in the country and a new series of maps show just how massive the park really is.

At a stunning 4,310 acres, Griffith Park dwarfs many other city parks around the world, and in some cases, even entire cities. To help us get our heads around just how big our patch of green is, one company used a mapping tool to compare Griffith with cities around the world. Spare Foot, a self-storage guide startup founded by two UCLA grads, created 19 maps that show how much space Griffith Park would take up in other cities in the U.S. and abroad.

Using the mapping tool MAPfrappe, the folks at Spare Foot drew an outline around Griffith Park to establish the park's footprint. The tool then allowed them to move the outline over other parts of the world, while recalculating for the mercator projection distortions of Google Maps, which throw off the proportions of places when they are flattened for a 2-dimensional map. And because Angelenos and New Yorkers love to compare their respective cities, the series of maps starts with Manhattan overlaid by Griffith's outline:

As you can see, Griffith would totally dominate lower Manhattan, even swallowing up parts of the Hudson and East Rivers. You could even fit the 778 acres of world-renowned Central Park into Griffith five times over with room to spare. And as far as we know, nobody has spotted a bobcat in the Sheep Meadow in recent years.

And while Chicago may have some lovely urban parks, Griffith would squash much of downtown Chicago, including the 319 acres of Grant Park.

We've also got San Francisco beat, even if you combined Golden Gate Park and the Presidio:

And sorry Fredrick Law Olmstead, mastermind behind Boston's Emerald Necklace of parks, we've got Beantown beat, too.

And don't think they forgot about international cities. As you can see at the top of the post, the central arrondissements (or districts) of Paris would be dominated by Griffith, and the park would eat up a huge chunk of Hong Kong and it would have to be converted into a water park were it plopped down in Venice.

And yes, while there may be larger urban parks around the world that could show us up, as an easily accessible urban oasis, Griffith Park will always be a favorite. We're even okay with the Grand Canyon dwarfing us:

So, while we may be short on green space throughout many parts of Los Angeles—at least according to the Environmental Justice Atlas—there's plenty of room for Angelenos to unwind in Griffith. With miles of hiking trails, two zoos, sports fields, museums, a theater, a world famous observatory and even the occasional guerrilla art installation, Griffith Park offers a wealth of options to escape the concrete of the city. The maps serve as a great reminder of just how lucky we are to have such cool and gargantuan city park in our backyard.