Movity Blog

Click here to view a rough San Francisco Pet Map

Most pet owners would agree with the statement “I want to live in a pet friendly area.”

However, how can pet owners gauge whether a neighborhood or location is pet friendly?  We quickly put together a map of factors that may contribute to a pet’s happiness: access to parks/off-leash areas, day care facilities, etc.  However, after mapping this data, it is clear that one would be hard pressed to make a richly informed decision about the suitability of a location based on this map. 

In judging a location’s suitability for pets, there are too many subjective (yet important) factors that public sources of data do not address. 

For example:

-       Is the off-leash area two blocks away filled with vagrants?

-       Do your neighbors own a Rottweiler?

-       Would you feel safe walking your dog late at night?

-       Are there frequent loud noises in an area that would frighten your pet?

Traditionally, data of this type could not be collected.  It required an understanding of the local area that was impractical for a centralized authority to collect.  However,  without this data this map offers a slightly superficial understanding of an area.  What is the value of living near two off-leash areas if both are areas you would want to avoid? 

We are interested in how much maps such as this can be improved with crowd-sourced data.  Can maps enriched with crowd-sourced data help consumers (or pet owners) find a better place to live more quickly?

Let us know what you think the pros/cons are of our rough pet-friendly map.  Want to add a comment about one of these areas?  Send it my way – we’ll add it to the map.

-Andrew