NC Census Map

MY goal in making this map of North Carolina was to gain more familiarity with the Census Reporter API, and start to dig down past the county level, to the zip code, area code, and census tract levels.

Starting Point

State and County Data

I started out with some code I wrote for my Census Map, which grabbed California county information, except this time I wrote a code that would turn state names and abbreviations into FIPS codes (here: http://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ansi_statetables.html), necessary to obtain geographic information from the Census Bureau or from Census Reporter, whose lovely API I was using.

Further Sub-Levels

Via the Census Bureau's own technical documentation, http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/doc/sf1.pdf (it is very extensive), we can obtain the following geographical entity hierarchy:

Next, I headed over to the Census Reporter API documentation: https://github.com/censusreporter/census-api/blob/master/API.md

This didn't say anything specific about geographies below the county level, so I assumed they were there, I just needed to request them correctly.

Sure enough, I grabbed the geoid for Dare County, NC, which was 05000US37055.

I then fed that geoid to the Census Reporter API, and it gave me information about the county:

$ curl "http://api.censusreporter.org/1.0/geo/tiger2013/05000US37055"
{"geometry": null, "type": "Feature", "properties": {"awater": 3054395108, "display_name": "Dare County, NC", "simple_name": "Dare County", "sumlevel": "050", "population": 34289, "full_geoid": "05000US37055", "aland": 992627006}}

and geometry information:

$ curl "http://api.censusreporter.org/1.0/geo/tiger2013/05000US37055?geom=True"
{"geometry": {"type": "MultiPolygon", "coordinates": [[[[-75.76384399999999, 35.233886], [-75.868684, 35.579451999999996], [-75.879179, 35.604172], [-75.87683299999999, 35.628116999999996], [-75.88395299999999, 35.632784], [-75.891953, 35.643328], [-75.890496, 35.652259], [-75.89834499999999, 35.661057], [-75.901164, 35.668997999999995], [-76.027445, 35.669094], [-76.03084299999999, 35.663227], [-76.035266, 35.662022], [-76.045987, 35.666117], [-76.029265, 35.682038999999996], [-76.022328, 35.709224999999996], [-76.025088, 35.721156], [-76.01927599999999, 35.752763], [-76.02239, 35.81066], [-76.01769399999999, 35.865356], [-76.00917799999999, 35.894453], [-75.987466, 35.916453], [-75.978991, 35.964459999999995], [-75.963734, 35.984291999999996], [-75.948736, 35.994425], [-75.78040899999999, 36.047422999999995], [-75.767448, 36.055639], [-75.763783, 36.062792], [-75.763192, 36.074594], [-75.77425, 36.103245], [-75.776439, 36.135726999999996], [-75.77865899999999, 36.142323999999995], [-75.789363, 36.154436], [-75.789075, 36.172205999999996], [-75.80169599999999, 36.187985], [-75.79943, 36.202217999999995], [-75.813189, 36.223544], [-75.70907799999999, 36.244983999999995], [-75.666246, 36.148924], [-75.566047, 35.975614], [-75.48050099999999, 35.814206999999996], [-75.46623699999999, 35.801314999999995], [-75.460815, 35.784524], [-75.437617, 35.74696], [-75.41781999999999, 35.686082], [-75.406815, 35.636972], [-75.40039, 35.593512], [-75.400849, 35.558718], [-75.402422, 35.54421], [-75.415089, 35.50018], [-75.426135, 35.386922999999996], [-75.447751, 35.309794], [-75.459334, 35.246552], [-75.468477, 35.21519], [-75.484571, 35.187577], [-75.505059, 35.174426], [-75.53217599999999, 35.167148999999995], [-75.55758399999999, 35.170535], [-75.581108, 35.183783999999996], [-75.59536899999999, 35.182826999999996], [-75.63621499999999, 35.172205], [-75.70737, 35.146111], [-75.73662, 35.140564999999995], [-75.76384399999999, 35.233886]]]]}, "type": "Feature", "properties": {"awater": 3054395108, "display_name": "Dare County, NC", "simple_name": "Dare County", "sumlevel": "050", "population": 34289, "full_geoid": "05000US37055", "aland": 992627006}}