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Lost Your Dog? There's An App For That

Lost Your Dog? There's An App For That

Dozens of dogs are lost every day in Buenos Aires. On one side of it there’s the owner who has lost their cherished companion, and on the other, the pet, confused and waiting for their human to come pick them up. If they’re lucky, someone will find them and keep them safe for a while.

So, how do you find a lost dog?

We used to put signs up on trees but now we have social networks in our digital age. As well as Facebook or Twitter, there’s Back2gether, a free app that can connect someone who has lost their pooch to someone who has found it.

Its interactive map allows you to specify the exact spot where the animal was last seen and leave a description. You can access, see and navigate the app without registering; you just have to log in through Facebook, says Argentine daily Clarin.

Losing a pet can be "overwhelming, not just for the owners but for the pet itself, who ends up wandering aimlessly," says Alfonso Cornejo Lavin, head creative at Wunderman, the agency that designed the app. It is intended to complement traditional means of looking for your dog.

Another of the agency's directors, José Azanza Arias, said the collaborators who conceived the app all "adored their pets."

The app was downloaded 3,000 times in its first week. "People use it and there are users constantly coming back," Azanza said.

Photo: Back2gether via Facebook

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Society

In The Shantytowns Of Buenos Aires, Proof That Neighbors Function Better Than Cities

Residents of the most disadvantaged peripheries of the Argentine capital are pushed to collaborate in the absence of municipal support. They build homes and create services that should be public. It is both admirable, and deplorable.

A person with blonde hair stands half hidden behind the brick wall infront of a house

A resident of Villa Palito, La Matanza, stands at their gate. August 21, 2020, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Guillermo Tella

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES – In Argentina, the increasing urgency of the urban poor's housing and public services needs has starkly revealed an absence of municipal policies, which may even be deliberate.

With urban development, local administrations seem dazzled, or blinded, by the city center's lights. Thus they select and strengthen mechanisms that heighten zonal and social inequalities, forcing the less-well-off to live "on the edge" and "behind" in all senses of these words. Likewise, territorial interventions by social actors have both a symbolic and material impact, particularly on marginal or "frontier" zones that are the focus of viewpoints about living "inside," "outside" or "behind."

The center and the periphery produce very different social perceptions. Living on the periphery is to live "behind," in an inevitable state of marginality. The periphery is a complex system of inequalities in terms of housing provision, infrastructures, facilities and transport.

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