Guys,
In San Francisco, neighborhoods are divided in 11 supervisory districts as well as assembly, congressional and senate districts. The city divides all of the city into voting precincts that have a fairly uniform population. The Census Bureau uses Block Groups, Census Tracts and then larger areas. There is some correspondence between voting precincts and census tracts (but not always). Sometimes precincts are split along block group boundaries. However, you can re organize the census data, voting data, registration data, property ownership records, etc into aggregate data sets along political and census tract boundaries as well as neighborhoods. It really boils down to what you want to do. It also will require a lot of effort - a great open source project. The republicans do this analysis for every election to identify constituencies to go after. The dems do it also. And the states are required every 10 years (census) to redraw district lines. This could be a very powerful tool for tracking changes over time and other demographic changes that are sometimes obfuscated by the government for reasons of their own devising. Regarding Free, the Census Bureau used to have Tiger files that we useful for translating boundaries. Also there is a lot of literature available on the how, why and anaylsis of these excercises. Cordially, Charles Bolton _____ From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Martin May Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 12:25 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Geowanking] neighborhood database? I don't know about free, but I know that Ian White is selling one, and a company that I used to work for compiled their own which they might be willing to license. Martin -- Martin May CTO, Brightkite.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] T 720-299-4027 On Sep 15, 2007, at 1:21 PM, Anselm Hook wrote: Is there a free database of American neighborhood names and polygonal boundaries. To elaborate: For example San Francisco has neighborhoods like 'SOMA' or 'chinatown' or 'mission'. My current need is a neighborhood database for Seattle, of which one appears here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_neighborhoods It seems like there may be data behind this - I am about to check if this is just from some publically available census data like census 2000. Also, http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~public/nmaps/fullcit2.htm And http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bus/neighborhoods/region_text.html But generally speaking is there something comprehensive for the entire United States? - a _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking -- Martin May CTO, Brightkite.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] T 720-299-4027
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