Thanks to Frank’s great LibGuide on NYC data, I learned that if you want to get demographic data about a NYC neighborhood from the Census that is reasonably up-to-date, your best bet is to find a PUMA that matches your neighborhood and then search the American Community Survey (ACS) data for numbers. I just taught a JRN 3060 class today for Prof. Roslyn Bernstein in which I walked them step-by-step in going from the PUMA number to the Census pages for the ACS. Recognizing that they may not be able to recreate that search for data when they are really ready to do it, I created a quick video in one-take about the steps and posted it to my YouTube page. I then emailed Prof. Bernstein with the URL for the video so the students can return to it if needed.
Here is the video I made, “Neighborhood Demographic Data for New York City.”
Above the list of neighborhoods and PUMA numbers on the libguide is a Google Map – clicking on neighborhoods in the map will give you the name and number and a direct link to the ACS profile for that neighborhood. If you expand the map to full screen, you can also click on neighborhood names in the legend, which will select the PUMA on the map and also provide a direct link.
Going to the ACS site is helpful if you want to show where the data comes from, but only necessary if you want to build tables showing variables for several neighborhoods in one table. I specifically created the map because the process of finding the ACS profiles for PUMAs was so beguiling.