5 replies to this topic

[Dennis McClendon]

On the theory that the only embarrassing question is the one you were too timid to ask. . .

I guess I don't know where to look for basic Census data tables. One of my clients wants a choropleth map of household income by tract for the Chicago area. Can someone point me to the right corner of the Census website?

[Dennis McClendon]

Eventually found what I was looking for on a local COG website.

But also found this step-by-step guide for tapping census.gov:
http://gis.esri.com/...s/educ_1628.pdf

[peanut]

Binghamton University has an excellent site for viewing and downloading Census Data from 2000:

http://censusmap.binghamton.edu

Make sure you turn off your popup blocker before using the site:

Rich

[Rob]

Can someone point me to the right corner of the Census website?

Dennis,

I usually start at this website the American Fact Finder from the Census; on the left side there is a link "data sets" that is a great gateway to all their data. The system takes a little while to learn, but you can completely customize reports and have them saved in Excel format with a key field ready for joining to map geometry.

rj

[Charlie Frye]

Dennis,

Your Maps and Data CD that came with ArcView has the Tract boundaries and IDs. That file contains some basic demographic data. Downloading the data you need from the DADs site is possible, but for Chicago that would take a few rather tedious hours. I did this for Redlands' block groups a few years ago and it took a couple of hours.

If you don't have that much time and your client is willing to pay, you can request a quote from the Tapestry data website. You can request just the demographic statistic and geographic area you need. I've never tried it and don't know what the pricing would be--but its an option. The Tapestry data comes at the census tract and ZIP code levels of geography.

Has anybody tried this?

[MapMedia]

Dennis - I have been using census (US and others) for years, and as a first recommendation I would say to get yourself over to the US Census website and become familiar with the data products. It may seem a little confusing at first but what you essentially want from them are (1) current tract polygons for Chicago and (2) Avg household income data table (you will need Summary File 3). If you have the current ESRI Maps & Data CD, you then have the tract boundaries, but this contains solely demographics sans income.