This video was sponsored by Dashlane.
I'm headed to the densest place in the United States and, unsurprisingly, it's the kind of place you can use a metro to get to.
You'd think that the densest place in the United States would be somewhere like New York City or Manhattan.
But it's actually a suburban community in Maryland, just outside of DC.
The place is called Friendship Village, Maryland, and it's a pretty standard mid-rise suburban community.
So, how did it become more dense than Manhattan? The answer lies within a quirk of US Census geography.
So whether you're an aspiring planner or somebody who wants to learn more about the Census, stick with me and
we'll figure out how Friendship Village became number one in density.
The quirk is that Friendship Village perfectly illustrates
the importance of where boundaries are drawn and how people are counted here in the United States.
That's the business of the US Census Bureau. The work the US Census does has a major impact on how federal programs are funded,
how communities plan for the future, and how researchers understand how places grow and change. So, we're at the point in the video
where we're going to be talking about census boundaries, which I know can be a little bit dry.
So let's go inside where it's warm and discuss it over some pizza.
Okay, we should probably start at the smallest unit of the Census: the household. When a household fills out and sends in their Census form
the census processes it and uses the address to geocode it (or map it in space).
Researchers and planners don't have access to this level of detail as it would be a pretty huge breach of privacy.
So instead the data is aggregated at different geographies.
If you've heard of one Census geography
it's probably the Census tract. For this demonstration, a census tract is a pizza.
A Census tract typically has about 4,000 people in it. In rural areas census tracts may be large, while in urban areas
they may be much smaller. The Census tries hard not to change the boundary of Census tracts
so researchers can track the population and demographic changes clearly. Within census tracts are Census blocks.
They are the smallest level of geography you can get basic statistical information from, such as total
population by age, sex, and race. In this example, they are pizza slices.
These are often literally a city block and there's no specific population target for them.
In fact,
some census blocks contain no people. But they are the basic building blocks for Census tracts,
as well as our next level: block groups. Block groups are just that—a group of blocks.
Imagine them as pizza slices on plates. Note that you can't have slices from two different pizzas on one plate.
Black groups have to be formed from the blocks of the same Census tract. Tracts, block groups, and blocks are the primary
statistical boundaries the Census uses, but they also provide data for your typical geographic boundaries, such as cities, counties,
metropolitan statistical areas, and states.
They also provide population statistics for Congressional districts to fulfill their Constitutional mandate.
The Census counts people every 10 years to apportion congressional districts of more or less equal size as congressional district populations fluctuate.
New boundaries need to be drawn to even out the population again.
That's where we get gerrymandering, where those new boundaries are drawn with the intent to benefit one political party over the other.
Okay, so we know all about Census boundaries. We know that the Census counts people every 10 years to fulfill its Constitutional
mandate, but did you know that the census surveys people continuously and releases that data yearly?
This is called the American Community Survey, a different thing than the decennial Census.
The decennial Census has to count everyone, while the ACS, as it's called,
uses sampling techniques to produce estimates instead of final totals.
So if you're one of the three and a half million households to get an ACS survey each year,
you're required by law to fill it out and return it. A few years ago
I got one and was super excited to fill it out.
I was so excited because of how useful ACS data is to planners and researchers. The survey asks questions about
demographics, housing, employment, commuting, and educational attainment.
It's an excellent tool for understanding exactly who lives in a particular area and how those places are changing over time.
To give you an idea of how ACS data can be used,
I'll give you some examples of how I've used it in the past as a city planner.
I used ACS data to get population data at the block level to populate a traffic model. As a researcher,
I've used demographic data to choose case study neighborhoods that match my income and ethnic criteria.
I've used household and employment data for the state of California to help develop a model that can predict the number of pedestrians at
Intersections. And it's not just me. The Federal government relies on
ACS data to divide up hundreds of billions of dollars to communities for federal programs. It's very very very useful!
ACS data is published every year in two forms:
The first one is one-year estimates for geographies larger than 65,000 people, typically cities, metro areas, and states.
The second is 5-year estimates, which summarizes data collected from the previous five years.
This information is available at the block group level.
Remember that the block level is too small for this kind of information to be used without possible privacy issues.
Okay, so I've talked a lot about the Census in this video without answering the big question:
Why is Friendship Village the densest place in the US? And the answer is because it's a different type of Census boundary called a census-designated
place. The Census, unsurprisingly, has a pretty good definition of a Census-designated place:
"Census-designated places are communities that lack separate governments, but otherwise resemble incorporated places.
They are settled population centers with a defined residential core, a relatively high population density, and a degree of local identity."
So I'm back in Friendship Village!
Basically, Census-designated places are like cities and towns,
but they don't have their own governments. Tens of millions of people live in Census-designated places,
so it makes sense for the Census, in concert with local officials, to define the boundaries and count people in these areas.
Friendship Village definitely has its own identity though. It doesn't have its own government. What makes it special is its size. It has
4,500 people living in an area of 0.06 square miles. It's tiny and it has nearly 3,000 households.
There are certainly small areas in Manhattan that have a higher residential density, but they aren't separate Census-designated places like Friendship Village.
Friendship Village isn't the only Census anomaly like this.
The densest Census tract is just one high-rise apartment in Chicago with an insane density of over
500,000 people per square mile! Now, I know that a video about the Census isn't very flashy.
But the information that Census provides is crucial to anyone who plans or researches cities.
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Thanks for watching, CC folks!
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