topic Re: how to download census blocks? in Mapping Questions

how to download census blocks?

AngelaCunningham — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:51:47 GMT

I am looking for demographic data at the census block level. I have been searching the US Census' ftp site and the American FactFinder page all day. I can't for the life of me figure out how to find it. While the webpages say that data is available down to the census block level, and while I've found the shapefiles for blocks both through ESRI and the Census' TIGERfile ftp, when it comes to data to populate these shapefiles there doesn't seem to be anyway of selecting this level of detail.

Using the American FactFinder page:
<http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t#none>
you can select by geographies from the list tab, but block isn't an option and any data returned is aggregated to whichever level you've selected. The other tabs don't seem to work at all.

I was hoping to find information of things like total population, tenure, occupancy, age and race, but I've pretty well given up hope of that. I was able to find a shapefile with 2010 population data by block: tp://ftp2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010BLKPOPHU/

...but I need to find block data for 2000 as well, and it still eludes me.

Any ideas?

thanks,
Angela

Re: how to download census blocks?

AnthonyGiles — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 07:11:40 GMT

Angela,

Have you tried this URL,

http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/geo/shapefiles2010/main

Regards

Anthony

Re: how to download census blocks?

AngelaCunningham — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 10:36:50 GMT

Thanks for the reply, Anthony.

I have the shapefiles, I'm looking for the data to append to them.

I want block level data, most especially population data for 2000.

Re: how to download census blocks?

DonCooke — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 23:28:49 GMT

I'm not a data person, but the PL-94-171 Files for 2010 and 2000 will have rudimentary counts at the block level.

The block data used to come out in STF (Summary Tape File) 3. But that was 1980. I'm dating myself!

I found this using Google: http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/9380/where-to-get-2010-census-block-data

Good luck! Don

Re: how to download census blocks?

AngelaCunningham — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 15:32:13 GMT

Thanks, Don!

I had been trying something like the suggestion in the stack exchange post, but I was doing it in a slightly different order and I guess that was enough to keep it from working at all.