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“Build It, And They Will Come.”
Over the years, dog parks have displayed some strong advantages within
communities. There has been an increase in awareness of community surroundings and
intimacy between neighbors, which have improved from the interactions that a dog parks
has to offer. Dog parks have enabled more people to get out into the community, which
might not have before. They allow people’s love for their companion to be expressed
with others of the same. It gives people that do not have kids the same joy and
interaction that people do. Dog parks allow people to get a break from their everyday
lives and back into the community to interact personally instead of on an electronically.
Dog parks have also allowed local and national companies to get involved in their
communities. It also gives your dog a place to be free and away from the burdens of
being alone. Dog parks should be considered an important recreational space when it
comes to the development of land within a community. Cities need to find the space and
build more dog parks in local communities.
Since the inception of the first national dog park in Berkeley in 1983, these new
recreational areas for dogs and their owners have become one of the most increasing
demands that city planners are now having to deal with on a daily basis. People are
starting to look for more outlets in their local communities and are turning to local city
planners for the answer. With the demand for such places, city planners are beginning to
find it difficult to fit another recreational space into developing city plans. Planners are
finding it hard to put these types of recreational areas in communities, because of the
current type of building. Most modern communities are what they call, Track Housing.
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These are developments that put the houses closer together to allow for maximum
housing. With the development of track housing, this is leaving less space to include
parks.
In the article “Who Let the Dogs Out,” the author relates the pros and cons from
the developments of a dog park in city planning with recent research of dog parks
throughout the United States. With the demand for dog parks increasing, city planners
are continually finding this new popular activity difficult to approach in a city plan. The
author states that with all the other recreational issues that are presently being dealt with
have to be met, adding this extra item into the picture divides “the recreational pie into
even-smaller pieces” (Krohe 25). This process tends to leave city planners frustrated
having to find space for this new trend when spaces for land development are already
