Community Profiles on Your Desktop (Metropolitan Report, v5 #1)
Summer 2004
Community Profiles Put Localized Economic and Demographic Data on Your Desktop
- Are you an individual thinking about buying a home in another community?
- Are you a business in search of low- to middle-income families with school-age children who could use your product or service?
- Are you a neighborhood organization trying to make a case for a new playground, because it seems that families with young children are buying homes formerly owned by older adults?
BMC has compiled all the data you need, right at your fingertips, in a series of 94 Community Profiles. Each profile consists of several pages of data presented in tabular form and displayed in ways that provide context and reveal trends about how the region’s communities are growing and changing.
Each Community Profile covers one Regional Planning District (RPD) as defined at about the time of the 1970 census, and includes data on population, households, types of housing, labor force, employment, education, income, residential and commercial development, and socioeconomic projections.
Since the RPD boundaries have remained virtually unchanged since their inception, Community Profiles provide a consistent comparison of data over time.
Maps indicating census tracts and transportation analysis zones (TAZ) accompany each profile. Population, household and housing data are shown at the census tract level, while projected population, households, employment, median income and population density are shown by TAZ.
- A potential homebuyer can get a sense of the housing mix, numbers of vacant properties, median home value, income and education level, major employers nearby, recent development in the area, and much more.
- A business can pinpoint its preferred customer base by income, educational level, age, type of household, race, or other factors.
- A neighborhood organization can determine whether the number of persons over age 65 in its RPD decreased between 1990 and 2000, while the number of households with children increased.
Planning professionals will find that comparing data over time provides a running account of the evolution of communities, and can illuminate how past policy decisions have affected the vitality and health a particular area. Community groups, neighborhood organizations, nonprofits and other non-governmental organizations also need data about the communities they serve, but often lack the resources to collect and organize the data themselves. Basic information about population, housing, income, education, development, and employers and
employment all help to frame the important issues in a community, and may help identify policy initiatives or indicate where areas of further study may be needed. Data at the census tract level can help identify disparities in income, housing or population density within a relatively small area.
Although at this time only data from the 1990 and 2000 Census are available, Community Profiles will incorporate data from the 1970 and 1980 Census as well. Data from other sources, such as BMC’s Building Permit Data System (BPDS), are more recent, yet still afford comparisons over time, at a geographic level small enough to be meaningful for community analysis. A detailed Technical Appendix lists data sources for each category of information and the process used to calculate particular figures.
Community Profiles are right there on your desktop, whenever you need data, at www.baltometro.org. Each Community Profile is available in PDF format, suitable for printing from a home or office computer.
Posted: 09/28/2004
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Last Updated on Thursday, 15 June 2006 10:47