[Geowanking] neighborhood database?

[Charles Bolton]

Guys,

 

In San Francisco, neighborhoods are divided in 11 supervisory districts as
well as assembly, congressional and senate districts.

The city divides all of the city into voting precincts that have a fairly
uniform population.  The Census Bureau uses Block Groups, Census Tracts and
then larger areas.  There is some correspondence between voting precincts
and census tracts (but not always).  Sometimes precincts are split along
block group boundaries.  However, you can re organize the census data,
voting data, registration data, property ownership records, etc into
aggregate data sets along political and census tract boundaries as well as
neighborhoods.

 

It really boils down to what you want to do.  It also will require a lot of
effort - a great open source project.  The republicans do this analysis for
every election to identify constituencies to go after.   The dems do it
also.  And the states are required every 10 years (census) to redraw
district lines.

 

 This could be a very powerful tool for tracking changes over time and other
demographic changes that are sometimes obfuscated by the government for
reasons of their own devising.

 

Regarding Free, the Census Bureau used to have Tiger files that we useful
for translating boundaries.

 

Also there is a lot of literature available on the how, why and anaylsis of
these excercises.

 

Cordially,

 

Charles Bolton

 

  _____  

From: geowanking-bounces at lists.burri.to
[mailto:geowanking-bounces at lists.burri.to] On Behalf Of Martin May
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 12:25 PM
To: anselm at hook.org; geowanking at lists.burri.to
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] neighborhood database?

 

 

I don't know about free, but I know that Ian White is selling one, and a
company that I used to work for compiled their own which they might be
willing to license.

 

Martin

 

-- 

Martin May

CTO, Brightkite.com

 

martin at brightkite.com

T 720-299-4027

 

On Sep 15, 2007, at 1:21 PM, Anselm Hook wrote:





Is there a free database of American neighborhood names and polygonal

boundaries.

 

To elaborate:

 

For example San Francisco has neighborhoods like 'SOMA' or 'chinatown'

or 'mission'.

 

My current need is a neighborhood database for Seattle, of which one

appears here:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_neighborhoods

 

It seems like there may be data behind this - I am about to check if

this is just from some publically available census data like census

2000.

 

Also,

 

http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~public/nmaps/fullcit2.htm

 

And

 

http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bus/neighborhoods/region_text.html

 

But generally speaking is there something comprehensive for the entire

United States?

 

- a

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-- 

Martin May

CTO, Brightkite.com

 

martin at brightkite.com

T 720-299-4027

 

 





 

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