Conclusions

As a result, we combined all of our layers and selections to research which areas were best fit to be categorized as “Child-Friendly” areas. This process included adding all of the elementary schools that satisfied the requirements made by us and through our research. From there, we chose the schools that we had in common as our elementary school areas that were categorized as “Child-Friendly” areas.

According to our results, areas around Finley Elementary School and Littlewood Elementary School are the most “child-friendly” areas in Gainesville, Florida. With these results, we can conclude that these are the best areas for children to be raised in Gainesville.

These results could help urban planners to determine where they would want to add other amenities such as more parks, playgrounds, youth organizations, etc. For example, if an urban planner were presented with a problem about where to include more parks, playgrounds, libraries, and youth organizations; they could use data similar to this to include these in the areas that were not categorized as our “child-friendly” areas. They would include it in the non-child friendly areas, because this would enhance those areas and allow them to become categorized as such.

Ideally, we would have found schools that had all amenities within the 1 mile buffer AND no sex offenders present to ensure both involvement and safety. Since our results show otherwise, we can say that as a whole, Alachua County does not offer very child-friendly cities. If it plans on accommodating more children, there will need to be a lot of revisions into the cities' designs. Gainesville, however, is definitely on its way to being a great city to raise a child.