Shapefile Projection

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

Hello.

 I have 100 US. metro cities in shapefiles  and would like to project them. I would like to know the most suitable projection type for them. Currently they are in Geographic Coordinate System: GCS_North_American_1983
Datum: D_North_American_1983.

Thanks a a lot

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

Okay let me read it and see

Thanks a lot

[DanPatterson_Retired]

unless you want to produce separate files for your separate city clusters... pick one like albers for instance, and just create bookmarks to zoom into those locations.  Then you have the over-arching perspective view and a more regionalized view... UTM is not the way to go.  I would give a real think about what it is you want to do.  It doesn't sound like you have any mission-critical geometry calculations to do... just some mapping to show whatever it is you want to show.

Keep it simple and leave the reading for the weekend, pick a country wide perspective and start from there, otherwise you will end up in a hopeless state of unnecessary work and potential confusion

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

I just want to calculate global moran's I, LISA, and QWR

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

I forgot to add i'm going to produce separate file for each metro city, because i can't run global moran's I on the overall 100 metro cities together, i have to do them separately

[RebeccaStrauch__GISP]

Also keep in mind, that depending on what you are needing to do with the points (polys?), if if the shapefile has a proper .prj (projection) file and/or if you bring it into a file gdb with the correct projection/cooredinate-system assigned, the data should project-on-the-fly.  In otherwords, you don't necessarily need to project them.

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

The shapefile has no proper .prj file. I wanted to project them so that I can run global Moran's I and LISA and GWR

[DanPatterson_Retired]

So you should read the help topic first for Global Morans, for instance, because the need to project the data is moot if your geographic coordinate system is within 30 degrees since the calculations will use a chordal distance.  Again, check it out before you start doing a whole load of unnecessary work like projecting 50+ pairs of data into different coordinate systems.

[ABDALLAMOHAMED]

Okay, i will do that

Thanks a lot for your help. Appreciated.