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NYC's Most Dog-Friendly Neighborhoods

By Casey Roberts August 23, 2017

Which NYC neighborhoods are the best for dogs?

In a city of cramped living quarters, fifth-floor walk-ups and limited access to outdoor space, you’d think pets would be a tough sell for New York City residents. Yet roughly 425,000 dogs live in New York City – more dogs than there are people in Oakland, CA[1].

In honor of National Dog Day, we partnered with the dog experts at Rover – the nation’s largest network of 5-star pet sitters and dog walkers – to uncover the most popular dog breeds and sizes in NYC neighborhoods, and the best neighborhoods in New York City for dogs and their faithful owners.

To uncover the rankings, we combined a number of factors, including the share of pet-friendly rental units listed on StreetEasy, the number of dog sitters on Rover, the number of dog parks and off-leash areas according to the City of New York[2], and the number of nearby veterinarians on Yelp. The 10 neighborhoods that offer the most dog-friendly amenities and community are:

See the map below for how all NYC neighborhoods fare in dog friendliness. The darker the neighborhood, the more dog-related amenities it offers.

The Most Dog-Friendly Neighborhoods by Borough

Manhattan:

  1. Battery Park City
  2. Tribeca
  3. Financial District
  4. Roosevelt Island
  5. SoHo

Brooklyn:

  1. DUMBO
  2. Columbia St Waterfront District
  3. Downtown Brooklyn
  4. Seagate
  5. Brooklyn Heights

Queens:

  1. Alley Park
  2. Corona
  3. New Hyde Park
  4. Whitestone
  5. Long Island City

Bronx:

  1. Riverdale
  2. Hunts Point
  3. Kingsbridge
  4. Bedford Park
  5. Tremont

Staten Island:

  1. Silver Lake
  2. New Brighton
  3. Pleasant Plains
  4. Sunnyside
  5. Princes Bay

In New York City, the breeds you’ll most commonly see walking the streets are:

  1. Yorkshire Terrier
  2. Shih Tzu
  3. Chihuahua
  4. Labrador Retriever
  5. Maltese
  1. Poodle
  2. French Bulldog
  3. Pitbull Mix
  4. Dachshund
  5. American Pit Bull Terrier

See the map below for each neighborhood’s most popular breed.

One Dog Size Doesn’t Fit All

Perhaps unsurprisingly, small dogs prevail across the city, making up 42 percent of NYC’s total dog population. But don’t discount large breed owners, who are willing to go to great lengths to maintain a normal city lifestyle with big dogs in tow. Medium and large dogs make up the rest of the pooch population at 31 and 26 percent, respectively. The remaining 1 percent of the city’s canine population goes to giant dogs – breeds including Newfoundlands, Great Danes and Bernese Mountain Dogs[3].

How We Did It

For this analysis, StreetEasy created a “Dog-Friendly Index” incorporating four key variables:

  1. The share of pet-friendly rental units in each neighborhood, recorded on StreetEasy from January to July 2017
  2. The share of dog sitters in each neighborhood, recorded by Rover from June to July 2017
  3. The number of dog parks, dog runs and off-leash areas in each neighborhood, recorded by the City of New York and updated as of April 2017
  4. The share of veterinarians in each neighborhood, recorded by Yelp from June to July 2017

To account for differences in neighborhood size, we normalized the data according to each neighborhood’s population estimate to track metrics on a per capita basis.

Dog parks and off-leash areas reported by the City of New York were geocoded by the park name and address. For each neighborhood, we calculated the number of dog parks and off-leash areas with a buffer of 1 km to account for any sites that exist within large parks.

[1] NYEDC Report on New York City’s Dog Population; https://www.nycedc.com/blog-entry/new-york-citys-dog-population

[2] NYC Open Data: Directory of Dog Runs and Off-Leash Areas; https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Recreation/Directory-of-Dog-Runs-and-Off-Leash-Areas/ipbu-mtcs

[3] Dog sizes recorded and defined by Rover.

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