Herkimer and Oneida Counties Census Data Affiliate

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Town and City Population Change Maps: 2000 to 2010

While the Census 2010 is a few years old now, I noticed that there hasn't really been any maps put out showing the changes each municipality experienced in terms of total population growth or loss. To that end, here are two maps, one for Herkimer County and one for Oneida County depicting the changes in each town or city in the region between the Census 2000 and Census 2010.

Click to Enlarge

The maps can also be found of the new Maps Page !

Dedicated Bike Lanes and Their Impact in New York City

According to the website America Bikes, Americans are increasingly searching for personal solutions to tight family budgets, rising health care costs, and time wasted in traffic. As a society, we are facing monumental challenges relating to climate change, pollution, and oil dependence. Despite a small current investment of resources, bicycling and walking already account for 10 percent of all trips made by Americans. The potential clearly exists to double that share: forty percent of all trips in the United States are just two miles or less, and yet the vast majority are made by car. These short car trips are the most polluting and energy intensive as well as the easiest to shift to bicycling and walking.

Continuing and strengthening our investment in bicycling and walking will enable our nation to move decisively towards a goal of increasing the share of trips taken by these modes from 10 percent to 20 percent. Such a shift from driving to bicycling and walking will provide tens of billions of dollars per year in economic, health, tourism, energy, environmental, safety, and congestion-related benefits.

America Bikes recent highlighted a study by the New York City DOT called Measuring the Street that shows that streets that safely accommodate bicycle and pedestrian travel are especially good at boosting small businesses, even in a recession. NYC DOT found that protected bikeways had a significant positive impact on local business strength. After the construction of a protected bicycle lane on 9th Avenue, local businesses saw a 49% increase in retail sales. In comparison, local businesses throughout Manhattan only saw a 3% increase in retail sales.

Below are two infographics from the report that highlight some of the advantages of dedicated bike lanes have for those riding, as well as other people using the roadways, pedestrians and local businesses.

Click to Enlarge

Monday, May 13, 2013

ACS Community Profile: Introducing the Westmoreland CDP

According to Wikipedia, the Town of Westmoreland was formed in 1792 from the neighboring Town of Whitestown. In 1802, part of Westmoreland was used to establish the Towns of Vernon and Verona. More of Westmoreland was lost in 1855 during the formation of the Town of Kirkland, located to the south of Westmoreland. Since that time the town boundaries have remained relatively stable. While Wikipedia recongnizes some 8 differnt hamlets in the town, only one has current standing with the US Census Bureau, and that would be Westmoreland, the census designated place, or CDP.

The Westmoreland CDP is located around the intersection of Route 233 and Main Street, just south of the local entrance to the NYS Thruway. This newly created CDP represents some three hundred residents, living in about 120 residences. CDPs are meant to represent small unincorporated areas that have some population and are largely recognizable by some commonly shared local name. Often hamlets (which are not incorporated) such as Old Forge in the Town of Webb come to mind when we think of CDPs, but there are potentially hundreds in our region. The hamlet of Westmoreland was one of several that were promoted, as it were, to have CDP status during the last census in 2010. To see a map of the Westmoreland CDP, or any of the regions CDPs, visit this previous post showing all the regional CDP maps.

What is the advantage of being a CDP? Well, the only true advantage is that census related data, especially data from the decennial census and the American Communities Survey (ACS), are provided for CDP geographies. Becoming a census designated place gives communities a platform for shouting "I'm a somebody!", at least in terms of now getting locally relevant data from the Census Bureau. Such data can be used potentially to "grow" and promote the community by local agencies and policy makers.

Below are links to the four basic profiles from the 2011 ACS Five Year Estimates for the newly formed Westmoreland CDP.

2011 ACS Five Year Estimates Demographic Profile: Westmoreland CDP
2011 ACS Five Year Estimates Social Profile: Westmoreland CDP
2011 ACS Five Year Estimates Economic Profile: Westmoreland CDP
2011 ACS Five Year Estimates Housing Profile: Westmoreland CDP

The Community Indicators Project For Herkimer and Oneida Counties

The Community Indicators Project for Herkimer and Oneida Counties is sponsored by the Leadership Alliance for a Vital Community (LAVC). The project examines data and trends from a number of governmental and other sources to illuminate the state of the economy and educational system, explore the condition of families and youths, and identify the complex challenges facing our communities.

The Alliance is composed of The Community Foundation, the United Way of the Valley and Greater Utica Area, and the Mohawk Valley EDGE. Each organization is interested in collecting community data and participating in the LAVC because they want to know the status of the community in each indicator area. This knowledge serves as a tool that each organization uses to move our region forward in accordance with their missions.

This web-based Community Indicators project includes 80 indicators organized under 10 topics: Arts, Culture and Leisure; Demographics; Economy; Education; Financial Self-Sufficiency; Health; Housing; Public Safety; Technology; and Transportation. For each indicator, you will discover a description of the indicator, a brief analysis of trends, charts displaying trends over time, and tables providing data for Herkimer and Oneida Counties, as well as comparison counties, New York State and nation, where data were available. A Regional Overview is also provided which highlights findings from each of the 10 topics.

Presently the data is only updated through the 2010 Five Year American Communities Survey (ACS) estimates on the Indicators website. Newer ACS data is currently available (2011 Five Year and can be found at by using the US Census Bureau's American Fact Finder data access page .

The Community Indicators Project has gotten a facelift, as well as updated data ! To learn more about these new features visit this post or go to their new website.

Friday, May 10, 2013

MAPS PAGE: Maps, Maps and MORE Maps !

One of the things we get a lot of requests for are our maps. These typically are maps marrying census geography to some themed piece of data. So for example, someone might be looking for poverty data distributed across the region in both counties. Or perhaps even housing related data, or really, just about anything you can imagine.

In order to make these requests easier to respond to, this will now become our official Map Page. Hopefully this will allow people to come to a single page location and find the map they are looking for, assuming one exists.

To that end, feel free to browse the maps below and bookmark this page as one to visit occasionally to see if any new maps have been added! I will be adding more over the next several days, including some of our older ones for comparative purposes, so stop by often !