[Music] Hi, I am Alexandra Barker.
Have you wondered how many people live in your neighborhood or census block? The decennial
census is the source of demographic and housing data for the census block. The Census Block is
the smallest geographic area that the Census Bureau releases data for. So, it's important to
understand it’s features and how to select a block when you're trying to access data from a census.
Every time I have a question about census geography. I reached out to one of my
favorite geographers, Dave Kraiker. So, this time I asked Dave to take us
on a field trip around the census block to show us it’s features and
also to show us how to select a census block when accessing data using data.census.gov.
So, join me for this geography lesson with Dave Kraiker.
Hi. we're out here today, we're looking going to be walking around this block.
As you can see behind me there's a huge car park but we're actually going to go up that street.
And walk around this block really quickly and I want you to remember
a couple things about census blocks. They are self-contained. So, we'd like to
begin at one spot walk around the block or drive around the block and end up where we started.
They're usually things we can see on the ground or they could be
surveyed boundaries. And then the other thing is we are actually,
census block is actually something we've created to capture the potential the population potential.
So that means that perhaps nobody is actually living here right now or hasn't built a house
but they they may someday. So that is part of the reasoning behind these sort of self-contained
blocks to hold population. All right, let's take a walk. Okay, here we are
at the corner, we're going to start walking up the street really quickly and then we're going to turn
the corner. Oh, those are nice homes. Keep going, turn the corner again. Oh man, look at that tree.
Down the street and around the corner. Lots of homes but over here there are a few apartments.
We keep going and then we get to our car park again and back to square one. That was a block.
Thanks everybody for allowing me to take you for that walk around the block. Today
I’m going to show you how to get a block data. So, all you need to do is come to data.census.gov
which is up here in the URL. Come down here to Advanced Search right here in the very center,
click on that. Come down here to Years and I always like to say select your year first.
Block date is only available for decennial censuses. So, either 2010 or 2020,
I will choose 2010 and then I will select my Geography. Right here, it's a filter
and I will say Block and then you're going to select your State.
And then I need to give it the State and the County.
And you can either select all the blocks in a county so, here Essex County or a particular
block or you could select a few blocks. So, in this case I’m going to go to tract number 193,
and I will select 2006. And then what I’ll do is come up here and click on the word Maps.
I always like to see the map that I selected and I’m going to just zoom in here so we can see it.
This is the block that we walked around, believe it or not. We started here at the - the top
and we walked along the street to the southeast and then I turned around the corner.
We're always looking at the inside the block to the right. Coming down here, we came past
some very nice large homes. We turned around the corner, there's a nice big tree right here
and then I walked down the hill down the street. Always looking to the right and then I turned the
corner here. Came about halfway up the street and there were some duplex apartments on the right.
And I kept walking, walking, walking and then we came back to where we started from.
So that's just what happens when you do walk around the block
and then all you need to do is select a table. Click on Table right here in the center.
And then this is what one of those tables will look like, okay.
If you wanted to look at many blocks at one time, you could certainly just
come back here to the logo, up here in the upper left, Census logo, Advanced Search,
the Year, and I’m selecting 2010, that you may want to do 2020, select Geography, Block.
And now you can either select All the Blocks within New Jersey
or you can select All the Blocks within a County. So, in this case, I select All the Blocks in Essex
County, in the lower right click on Search and then you can click on whatever topic you want.
And remember that block numbers can change after decennial. So, be aware that when you're looking
at the information. And here, for example is Race, I click on that and it is a very large table.
So, it's not going to come up here on the screen, but we can download it very easily. The portal is
created to allow for quick downloading and so you can just click on this and it will download the
whole table for you. So that is how we can find block data you can do it for 2000, 2010 or 2020.
Thank you everyone for walking around the block and listening to me and delving into this little
adventure to look for data at the block level. David I enjoyed our field trip. Thank you for
taking us around the census block to learn more about this unique
geography. Next time we are trying to access data for the block level
this information will become handy. And if you enjoyed tagging along with Dave Kraiker for
this geography lesson don’t forget to visit census.gov/academy and to Subscribe. Thank you.