10 U.S. cities with the most green space

City living is great—the hustle and bustle, an array of activities and amenities from theater, sports and restaurants. But, when you need to relax, breathe some fresh air and explore nature, which U.S. cities offer you a green escape?

Michelle M. Havich, Editor

January 5, 2023

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Geoff Chang/Unsplash

City living is great—the hustle and bustle, an array of activities and amenities from theater, sports and restaurants. But, when you need to relax, breathe some fresh air and explore nature, which U.S. cities offer you a green escape?

Lawn Love has ranked almost 100 of the biggest U.S. cities to find the cities with the most green space.

To determine the ranking, they gathered publicly available data from 200 of the biggest U.S. cities based on five factors—total public and private green area per capita, number of parks and green spaces, total park acreage, share of land used for parks and recreation, and average yard square footage. Then, they calculated weighted scores for each factor and averaged the scores for each city across all factors. Due to lack of sufficient data across all five factors, 103 cities were eliminated from the study.

The city with the highest average score is Chesapeake, Va., which has the highest total green area per capita out of the cities in our ranking. The top cities span the country from east coast to (almost) the west coast. Click the gallery above to see which cities round out the top 10.

About the Author

Michelle M. Havich

Editor, American City & County

Michelle M. Havich is an award-winning writer and editor with more than 20 years of experience in magazine publishing in a variety of niche markets with both commercial and B2B titles, including ATIDecorating SpacesPalm Beach Illustrated and Impressions. Before joining American City & County, she served as the managing editor of design:retail magazine.

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