I found this really interesting, thanks guys. It would be nice if there were some translucency or something, so that you can see the satellite picture also, is this possible?

Also one other suggestion maybe you could use the population data you already have to improve the other maps. For example, Central Park in New York has misleading median age and m/f ratio information, maybe sections like this could be transparent or some to colour off your scale, eg green.

Very cool. I'm just getting into ArcView at work... I'm definitely going to have to figure out how to export some data to Google Earth. It just makes it so much more fun! I work with political data, and it seems like I should be able to do the same thing with precincts and electoral data that you did with block groups and census data.

BTW, it seems like you might need to set a mime-type on your server for .kmz files.

http://www.keyhole.com/kml/kml_tut.html#kml_server

Safari downloaded your files as text.

Is there a quick way to download all the files in one go? Or do I need to click on every link?

Thanks for the great data!
How about a more detailed legend? For example, you state that in the pop. density maps, white is 800+ / square mile and black is such and such, but what about the other colors?

Hi guys -- great work, thanks for sharing this.

One quick question: Do you plan on releasing a version that has the actual census block group numbers in there? It would be great to relate data back to block groups as described here:

http://ftp2.census.gov/plmap/pl_blk/st06_California/

Is there a way to look at geocoded census information by county.

I need to look at census tracts, street addresses, road networks for the city of Tulsa, OK county is Tulsa.

I have low income census tract numbers and need to know where these neighborhoods are located.

Every time I try to open on of these files, Google Earth crashes. The KML looks fine as near as I can tell. I'm using the latest stable version of Google Earth. Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong? It doesn't seem to matter which file I use.

Awesome work here! The marketing data that can be generated from census extrapolation could be very valuable... thanks for sharing your KMZ's.

I second Brian's comment. Can we get more granularity in the population color legend? Or can you simply state what the colors mean?

Awesome, congrats !!

Do you know how I could get this kind of information from the Canada ?
Thanks !

Chris,

Nevermind!

I mean, do you have this kind of information (pop. density) of the Canada ?!

Chris,

A few other people have mentioned this, but I would just like to add my vote/request/begging for a legend of sorts. Even if you provided it as a static web page that I could refer to, having a legend of color to population density would be great.

Also I like you idea of outlining the block level regions. I noticed expanding out the state name gives you a list "block group 1", "block group 2", and so on, and the names repeat themselves, but give a detailed number of people per square mile. Clicking on the name lets me see where it's referencing, and then I can zoom in and make out the area, but it's a guessing game to figure out where a block is and how far it extends. Labelling it with the region numbers that the census bureau provides would definately make things more efficient.

Those two things aside, this is a incredible piece of work and is just about what I was looking for to help me with a grant I am applying for.

This is a great post - thanks for sharing the ideas and data files. I'm helping someone out map Census data and found your examples very helpful. I've put together a <a href="http://censuskml.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">blog</a> to track my experiments. I've been playing with the 3rd dimension to show the data.

One of the things I've found is that Google Earth [at least the Mac version] seems to have a bug when it comes to loading 3D polygons from KML files in that it shows very dark colors, regardless of what the actual color is in the KML file. If you edit the object, the color auto-magically brightens, have you guys noticed this?

Thanks again!

Wow, this is great stuff! Information wants to be free and such, wonderful!

BTW, are you aware of Imran Haque's <a href="http://gecensus.stanford.edu/gcensus/" rel="nofollow">gCensus</a> project at Stanford? Saying that it is very similar to your project would be an understatement, perhaps you guys could work together?

This is great. I'd love to also see median income, if that information is available.

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Jennifer - I have put together maps of Median HH income at <a href="http://censuskml.blogspot.com" rel="nofollow">CensusKML</a> in this <a href="http://censuskml.blogspot.com/2007/03/getting-better-color-schemes.html" rel="nofollow">post</a>. Feel free to drop me a line and I'll happily share the KMZ files.

The data you have put together is excellent. Thanks so much.

I have a question. I assume that the data is from the 2000 Census. Do you have data from previous years (i.e. 1990, 1980, etc.)? With multiple years of data it would be possible map the growth of a city over time.

Thanks again.

Related to Nick's question - can you confirm that these layers are based on the 2000 Census?

Thanks

Is there any way (using Google Earth and your data or additional data available online) to draw a polygon over an area of the map, and get a population count?

We are trying to work out area definitions for sale/representation of our software products, and it would be very helpful to know how many people are in a particular area on the map.