Urban Dog Parks

Urban dog parks play a few roles within a community, including a sense of belongingness in the community and a movement towards a more sustainable future.

At a dog park, there are many interactions between people that take place. People's dogs run around together and the dogs act as a bridge for people talk to each other. Another way is that if some one's dog is cute, people want to go up to the dog to pet it. That allows strangers to interact with each other and create a relationship that wasn't there before.

The dog park can also create a movement towards a more sustainable future because it is in an urban setting. Some people living in an urban environment have lacked the opportunity to explore and experience nature. Usually dog parks are small areas but they have grass, trees, and various other plants. They are also a fairly quiet area where some people can get away from the urban life. Their experience with this could be used as a driving force to save places similar to this and reduce the amount of expansion that is taking place around cities.

Overall I believe that a dog park is a good thing to have within a community because it brings people closer together and it allows some residents to experience a small portion of what is beyond the buildings and asphalt roads.

Community Gardens

Community gardens play a few roles within a neighborhood or community. One of them is it brings the people in the community closer together. A community garden is usually a small parcel of land that is built by the community so people can grow their own vegetables if they don't have enough space in their back yard. It provides communication and relationship building opportunities between one another. Some people may ask for help from each other which will build relationships, and others may become social friends, planning on times to go to the garden each day to talk and tend to their plants.

Another role that a community garden plays is that it conserves a small green space in the area. The garden provides a view of where our food comes from, some people who are city dwellers are oblivious and think that vegetables and food just appear in the grocery store. Being able for someone to go through the process of watching plants grow and creating their own food might foster a new idea or opinion about nature and what goes on around them.