I want to start a thread for people who are interested in mapping the US 2010 Census Data - for sharing ideas and free data sources.
My goal is to make a map of the US that shows Race at the block level. So I'd like to color code areas for the major race groups: black, white, hispanic, asian, and native american. I'm also interested in income data - which is available down to the census tract level. There are several problems trying to do this with Google Maps. These problems include -Census Data set is very large - 200 GB for the entire summary file 1. It'll be smaller if I filter out all the variables I don't need, but it still is going to be huge. -Google Maps has trouble displaying large KML files. I'd like to convert the Tiger Shapefiles (which define the boundaries of census tracts, block groups, etc) into KML. This is probably feasible if I do it for a single state and only down to the census tract level. But if I try to do it for block groups or blocks - it will be harder. -I could generate tiles. But if I want to show blocks on tiles I need to go to zoom level 14 or more. I either need to statically generate a huge number of tiles (to cover the entire US at zoom level 14) or do it dynamically. For generating static tiles I think GMapCreator looks like the best solution: http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/software/gmapcreator.asp Does around 1000 tiles/minute on my computer. -Census Data is in a hard to use format. The Census Bureau recommends using a Microsoft Access tool to access it. If you do not need the block groups and block level data, an *excellent* resource is: http://census.ire.org/ How can I display block level data? For Census Geographical Areas my guess is there are around -3000 counties -40,000 zip codes -75,000 census tracts (1 per 4000 people) -210,000 block groups -8 million blocks If I were to use KML I think I could display counties for the entire US map, zip codes when zoomed in to the state, census tracts when zoomed into the state (might be slow for big states), block groups when zoomed into a county, and blocks for medium and small counties. To do this I'd need to generate 3000+ KML files (one for each county). Is there a better way? Note: I'm using this county KML file (which you are free to use): http://www.energyjustice.net/map/kml/county_boundaries.kml Also: Are there any good Census 2010 data APIs? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API V2" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-maps-api?hl=en.
