A building boom has brought thousands of new residents to apartments in downtown Raleigh, NC. That trend toward greater density is colliding with another reality of urban life — downtown residents love their dogs, even if they don’t have backyards that give their pooches plenty of space to play.
The obvious answer is to build more dog parks, but that solution is a tricky one in a downtown where land is scarce and parks vie for space with other priorities.
Raleigh has embraced a stopgap solution: The city operates pop-up dog parks downtown that give dogs a place to play for a day or two.
In the two most ambitious examples, Raleigh created pop-up dog parks at Dorothea Dix Park complete with food and beer vendors. The city has also tested less elaborate pop-up parks that involve little more than erecting and taking down temporary fences and letting downtown residents know about the event.
The city ultimately hopes to build a permanent dog park downtown, and the pop-up events let parks officials gauge the pros and cons of various locations. “It gives us a chance to test out these sites,” says T.J. McCourt, planning supervisor in Raleigh’s Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources Department.
For now, the temporary solution is an inexpensive one. Setting up the fence takes about an hour, McCourt says, and the pop-up parks cost a fraction of the tab for building a permanent dog park.
Raleigh isn’t alone in promoting temporary places for dogs to play. Among the cities that have experimented with pop-up dog parks are Austin, TX, Sacramento, CA, West Hartford, CT, and Rome, GA.
More on meeting residents’ needs with pop-up dog parks appears in the November issue of Downtown Idea Exchange. Click to learn more about Downtown Idea Exchange and other resources for revitalizing downtowns and commercial corridors.