Life in London can be daunting.

I moved to the city in June of 2004 from Manhattan, NYC and it is only now, more than four years after I first turned the key into a small flat in the heart of East London, that I am starting to feel at home. There is an expression in English for which we have no equivalent in French and which brilliantly captures my feelings about the British capital: It grows on you.

But it certainly wasn’t love at first sight. Architecturally, it initially struck me as a rather haphazard mix of grand old buildings and terrifyingly ugly newer ones, with no perceivable theme threading the various neighborhoods together.

Among the constructions that most offended my sensibility at first were the concrete residential tower blocks omnipresent in the poorer parts of town and a flurry of dreary-looking, bulky, multi-level art complexes like the Barbican.

Later on I learned that these visual warts are actually cherished examples of “Brutalist” architecture, and that in Tower Hamlets, the rather looked-down-upon borough where I live, some residents have filed petitions to safeguard the eye sores from demolition. I say bring on the bulldozers.

So you see where I’m going here. London is no Rome or Paris (and I say this as someone who hasn’t lived in the French capital for close to a decade now and entertains no return fantasy.)

But there are beautiful, ambitious and sometimes whimsical edifices sprinkled around town too. I would argue, however, that it’s not these individual landmark buildings, such as St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London or the Tate Modern, that eventually win you over to the city. Instead, as my sister put it when she came to visit for her birthday last weekend, it’s the “feeling of space.”

This feeling of space is difficult to convey in writing, but it is a very special attribute of London and makes it entirely different from New York, Hong-Kong, Singapore or even European capitals like Paris and Milan.

On reflection, I think two features of London help make it seem breezier than other big cities: the size of its buildings and the parks.

In most London neighborhoods, the tallest constructions are often only two stories high. Even in East London, which has received more than its fair share of brutalist gems, neat rows of stocky and humble-looking Victorian houses have survived the bombings of WWII and, more recently, the assault of hungry developers. Their fighting spirit it still palpable today, as they stand tightly together, a meager but tenacious barrier to the tide of luxury high rises spreading from Canary Wharf.

The result is that there, and in many other parts of London, you can see the sky without risking a torticollis.

And then there are the parks. And please, don’t try to argue with me that Hyde Park rules. It may be big, it may be central and it may be loved by tourists but it has always seemed a bit soulless to me.

So next time you’re in London, try visiting Hampstead Heath and its wonderful bathing ponds to the north west or take a stroll in Victoria Park, to the east. And if you insist on remaining in central London then explore Regent’s Park, its rose garden, ponds and zoo. Have coffee at the tennis club and forget about the traffic humming in the distance. From the northern extremity of the park you can actually bike along the Regents Canal all the way to the Limehouse marina, only about a mile from Canary Wharf, where many of the big banks have set up shop over the past five years.

Once you get there you will see what I mean about the importance of being able to see the sky from the sidewalk.