During my stay in Leicester, UK, I developed a habit of visiting small parks nearby my home in the evenings to relax. I seriously think this is a nice thing to have a lot of parks around. They provide good environment to relax and rest. I miss this in India. Chennai is a relatively large city compared to Leicester. But the city is not planned to have enough space for even a few parks. I have made a snapshot of both the cities at the same zoom level using Google maps. Compare yourself how much green areas you can identify in each cities.
Leicester
Chennai
It’s said that Chennai has 260 parks. I don’t see any of them in the map. Most of the parks mentioned in Chennai corporation website doesn’t seem to exist. Leicester has only 21 parks, but they are huge enough to be considered as parks. There are mentions about the negligence of parks and open spaces in media here and here. Anyway I enjoyed visiting public parks in Leicester and here are a few snaps of them.
Brown Wanderer 