The 2010 census data was released yesterday with breakdown by city. I reviewed the data files and they are complex to say the least, but the Detroit News clearly has some good database folks on staff and they published a very nice interactive map broken down by city. It is accessible here.
I took their data from both 2000 and 2010 and compiled it into a handy view for all of the communities that comprise the Grosse Pointe Public School System. One anomaly in the Detroit News’ presentation of the data was it appears their totals by city did not foot to the aggregate of the breakdowns they offered in the pop up windows. Not knowing what they are, I merely calculated it as “Unassigned.”
Here is the compiled report
GP Census Data
2 responses to “Census data for Grosse Pointe and Harper Woods communities”
Hello Brendan,
While I appreciate you bringing important data on the Grosse Pointes and Harper Woods to your readers, I lament the fact that you reference a secondary data source (The Detroit News) instead of going to the primary source for this data, the U.S. Census Bureau. In so doing, you have repeated the same mistake as The Detroit News in their “ethnic breakdown” of Metropolitan Detroit community populations. The Census Bureau categorizes population by race and by ethnicity, but they should not be comingled. For example, the Census Bureau categorizes race as follows: White Only, Black Only, Native American Only, Asian Only, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander Only, Other Only, and Two or More Races. Whether an individual is Hispanic is completely independent of race. If you want to include the ethnic classification of Hispanics in your data, then you should treat this classification separately from race. One way to do this would be to provide a breakdown of the population in each community by racial category (as I have presented) and then a breakdown of the population in each community as Hispanic versus Non-Hispanic. A second (more complex) breakdown would be to separate each racial classification into Hispanic vs. Non-Hispanic. For example, you could report the number residents self-identified as Hispanic Whites vs. Non-Hispanic Whites, Hispanic Blacks vs. Non-Hispanic Blacks, etc. Regardless of your approach, you will discover that the Census-defined racial and ethnic composition of the Grosse Pointes and Harper Woods is different than what you present here. For more information on the U.S. Census and all of the primary data they have collected about the Grosse Pointes and Harper Woods, please visit http://www.census.gov and search the American FactFinder 2 database.
Thank you for all your efforts in support of Grosse Pointe Public Schools!
Sincerely,
Joseph A. MacDonald, Ph.D., AICP
Senior Research Associate
American Planning Association
Washington, DC
jmacdonald@planning.org
202.349.1013
Thanks, Dr. MacDonald. These are good points. I had tried to manipulate the primary census data, but could not “crack the code” in terms of figuring out how to use the data files. I will take another run at it, or perhaps the purer form exists out there already.
Point taken and appreciated.
Brendan