ARCDBA.Census_Block_2010_Poly

SDE Feature Class

Description Spatial Attributes

Keywords
Theme: boundaries
Theme: County or equivalent entity, Polygon, Block, Census Block
Place: United States, U.S., County or Equivalent Entity, Prince George's, 24033

Description
Abstract
The TIGER/Line Files are shapefiles and related database files (.dbf) that are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB).  The MTDB represents a seamless national file with no overlaps or gaps between parts, however, each TIGER/Line File is designed to stand alone as an independent data set, or they can be combined to cover the entire nation.  Census Blocks are statistical areas bounded on all sides by visible features, such as streets, roads, streams, and railroad tracks, and/or by nonvisible boundaries such as city, town, township, and county limits, and short line-of-sight extensions of streets and roads.  Census blocks are relatively small in area; for example, a block in a city bounded by streets.  However, census blocks in remote areas are often large and irregular and may even be many square miles in area.  A common misunderstanding is that data users think census blocks are used geographically to build all other census geographic areas, rather all other census geographic areas are updated and then used as the primary constraints, along with roads and water features, to delineate the tabulation blocks.  As a result, all 2010 Census blocks nest within every other 2010 Census geographic area, so that Census Bureau statistical data can be tabulated at the block level and aggregated up to the appropriate geographic areas.  Census blocks cover all territory in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas (American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands).  Blocks are the smallest geographic areas for which the Census Bureau publishes data from the decennial census.  A block may consist of one or more faces.

Purpose
In order for others to use the information in the Census MAF/TIGER database in a geographic information system (GIS) or for other geographic applications, the Census Bureau releases to the public extracts of the database in the form of TIGER/Line Shapefiles.

Updates by MNCPPC Staff:
5/5/2011 - Added additional demographic data for individual race populations from the U.S. Census Bureau; changed abbreviations used for field names to full English spelling with original abbreviation found within the metadata for each field; reorganized and grouped the fields in the feature table by geographic information, governmental data, housing information, and population statistics.
3/18/2011 - Added demographic and housing data from U.S. Census Bureau, join based on the BLOCKID text field.
3/16/2011 - Redefined the schema to match Census Tract 2000 Poly feature class by:

*Renaming BLOCK_NUM field to BLOCK_NUMBER
*Redefing BLOCK_NUMBER field from Double to Text with a length of 5
*Renaming CENSUS_TRACT field to TRACT
*Redefining TRACT field from Double to Text with a length 7
*Added 2 trailing zeroes to any Census Tract number that was four characters and not six 
*Adding a BLOCK_ID field as Text with a length of 8 and calculating it as Right([TRACT],4)+BLOCK_NUMBER
*Adding a BLOCK_ID1 field as Double and calculating it from BLOCK_ID
*Adding a BLOCK_GROUP_NUMBER as Text with a length of 7 and calculating it as the Left([BLOCK_NUMBER],7)

_________________

Status of the data

Time period for which the data is relevant

Publication Information
_________________

Constraints on accessing and using the data

Details about this document

Metadata stylesheets are provided courtesy of ESRI. Copyright (c) 1999-2004, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.