IN 2001 I remember buying a Geolytics software package because they
claimed to be compatible with ArcView 3.1. We received it in the summer and I began to pull out demographic data. Map after Map, all for the Peoria-Pekin Future Landscapes Project. It was fun; I’d extract a table and throw it on a map. Honestly, out of ignorance and inexperience, I most likely made some inaccurate maps. Show this, normalize by that. We probably made nearly 200 maps for that project and only a handful made it to the final report. I have no idea what that report was ever used for, or if it was even used. I do remember how confusing Census data was.
Yesterday after about 45 minutes of work (not counting download time) I have my own Access Database for all of Illinois and all of the SF1 data down to the BLOCK level. I can choose my demographic attributes then save a query as an excel spreadsheet. No Geolytics required. The @USCensusBureau has made it relatively easy to parse through the data by giving us a FTP site, database shell and step-by-step instructions on how to import the state of your choice.
Give it a shot. They actually answer the phone too!
I’m not planning on making 200+ maps for a sustainability study that will sit on the shelf. However, I do know I’m going to be using the data later today.
Yeah, you can download “ALL Blocks” of a certain county and then download the table. But then you have to transpose the table to get a GEOID as an attribute in order to join it to a feature class.
yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. geesh.
Thanks to a heaping pile of other scrumptious morsels on my plate, I haven’t been able to delve into Census data yet.
Now that I’ve disclaimed my current ignorance, as nice as the Census Bureau-provided tools sound from your post and the little bit of reading I’ve been able to do, the whole process still seems cumbersome. I may be off base, but it seems like there should still be a simpler way to accomplish data extraction. The new American FactFinder may be a partial answer, but the Census Bureau is nothing if not complex.
Yeah, you can download “ALL Blocks” of a certain county and then download the table. But then you have to transpose the table to get a GEOID as an attribute in order to join it to a feature class.