Project One: Urban Geography

Comparing liveability for families with dogs in different neighborhoods.

This is our second post. We are going to present the methodology chosen to decide which of the three neighborhoods proposed is more appropriate or complete for families with dogs: Marroquina (District of Moratalaz), Recoletos (District of Salamanca) and Ciudad Universitaria (Francos Rodríguez). To see a map with the streets of each neighborhood you can go to http://www.distritosdemadrid.com/mapa.php.

Our base neighborhood will be Ciudad Universitaria and the other two will be compared with the data collected in this one.

We have chosen some factors to measure the liveability for families with dogs. Leisure time is the key category that helps to decide which neighborhood is the most liveable.  Why? Because if you have a dog you´ll probably spend a lot of time walking down the streets so it´s very important to live in a comfortable, enjoyable and entertaining neighborhood for those long walks with your pet.

How indicators will be used to measure the leisure time?

Number of Parks with and without dog zone. Of course we must consider the dimensions of the park and a subjective rating on the state of the park, the number of dogs and their owners that are frequently there(if there are other people and dogs walking around, if we can play or run with our dog, etc.).

The sidewalks are important too to go for a walk with our dog because in cities like Madrid with a lot of traffic you have to consider the width to walk comfortable. We will measure this with an average of width meters of the different sidewalks.

The number of dogs per neighborhood is a very interesting data. This indicator gives us   crucial information: on one side we can guess that if there are more animals it is because is a better neighborhood for them and in the other side we have more potential playmates for our pet.

An finally we will  take into account the public bags spots, although we know the city council is restricting this service, it give us some information about the cleaning and maintenance services of the neighborhood.

Another important category is the healthcare services for our dogs. About the veterinary centers although we know that sometimes its better move to another area for our trusted vet it´s true that the more offer we have the more probabilities to find better services. So we will use a quantity indicator to measure the medical vets and 24 our services.

In this category we have also considered another services like: pet shops, dog groomers and dog walkers. All measured with quantifiers.

The last category “dog allowance on public places” includes perhaps less decisive factors in the choice of our neighborhood, but still interesting for people who live in them as number of dog allowing hotels, number of dog allowing restaurants, number of dog allowing supermarkets, or other shops…

This is the list of categories, factors and indicators summarized.

1.      Factors who make a neighborhood suitable or not for families with dogs:

·         Healthcare of  dogs

·         Leisure time of  dogs

·         Dog allowance on public places

2.      Indicators of these factors:

Healthcare of dogs

-          Number of Pet shops                                                

-          Number of Veterinaries                                           

o   Does anyone offer24 hours service?

-          Number of dog groomers                             

-          Number of Animal Shelter

Leisure time of the dogs

-          Number of Parks

o   Do they have dog zone?

-          Width of the Sidewalk

-          Number of dog walkers

o   Salary (€/h)

-          Number of trees

-          Number of dogs ( potential playmates)                   

-          Public bags spots (to pick up dog mess)      

Dog allowance in public places                              

-          Number of Dog allowing hotels

-          Number of Dog allowing restaurants                                   

-          Number of Dog allowing supermarkets, or other shops

We have also checked the Madrid city ordinance about pet owning: http://www.madridsalud.es/salud_publica/servicios_veterinarios/pdfs/omrtpanimales.pdf and we found some interesting issues about the how the owner must ensure that the pet behaves properly outside the house, what  time of the day the dogs can run free in the parks, etc.