The Emory Libraries Electronic Data Center has put a new interactive map entitled “Snapshot of Atlanta” on its website that lets you look at Atlanta at a neighborhood level based on a variety of demographic factors. Anything from median age to median income to population change (2000-2009) to average household size.
Above is a snapshot of the median income map for Decatur, Avondale and Druid Hills. Looks like Winnona Park and Northwest Decatur are still the wealthiest areas in the COD.
Personally, I found the median age, population change and household size maps particularly interesting. Check it out!
Huge thanks to Clairmont Heights Civic Association for pointing this out.
So it’s true, I alone am keeping Winnona from passing Druid Hills in terms of wealth.
Can anyone tell what the data year is for these maps? The population change map says that it’s 2000-2009 but I can’t tell whether the rest of the maps are 2009, or an average of 2000-2009, or what. I may just be missing the reference.
I could mull over these for a long time. There’s some areas on particular maps that don’t make sense to me n terms of what I know about the neighborhood, but I think may be due to the effect of apartment complexes or condo developments or one particularly upscale street influencing the rest of the census block. Median household income isn’t always matching up with median home value which is interesting but may due to micro-area effects.
I definitely don’t understand why, when I click on a particular census tract in certain transparencies, e.g. population change, I often get a value that doesn’t match the color scale in the legend. Those should match, no? I had some interesting thoughts about the effect of the 2003 reconfiguration on neighborhoods based on whether the population had increased or decreased around CSD schools but then I get different values when I click on the census tract rather than looking at what color it was given.
One thing for sure–The Shamrock M.S. is not the same demographically as Druid Hills H.S.
I should have said that the Shamrock HS area is not the same demographically as the Druid Hills HS area. The students should be similar since I think there’s only one middle school and one high school for that attendance zone.
Here is a different site that analyzes other variables:
http://mapping.atlantaregional.com/essentials/web/Viewer.aspx?Site=ARC
Take a look a Social Explorer (free version) for some very interesting recent and historic demographic maps. You can easily drill down to Decatur.
http://www.socialexplorer.com
There sure are a lot of clicks, but not a lot of comments on this post.
So I’ll attempt to get a ball rolling with some random observations:
North Decatur is noticeably older than South Decatur, and not surprisingly then, households are also noticeably smaller in the North than the South.
Also, the only noticeable population growth area in the city is downtown.
Hi DM, I’m a clicker, not a poster on this interesting map. I can’t figure out how to make it work for me. I’ve got the household income part but haven’t figured out how to get the other demographic data.
One observation about the income data–there’s a wide world of difference between $75,000 a year and $400,000 a year.
On the Emory page, there’s a drop down menu in the upper right hand corner, which gives around eight different demographics views.
Got it, thanks. Wait! I’m the oldest and poorest person in my neighborhood? Bummer.
Certainly reaffirms what I think many people intuitively figure about the area; it would be helpful, though, if there were more breakpoints for households earning more than $75,000 – there’s a lot of variation in that range and, according to some, anything less than $250,000 is still middle class…
Cool, but less interesting than it initially seemed. I think the most interesting stories would be found within the income bracket above $75k (there’s a LOT of territory between 75k and 400k); and home value categories based on means (in addition to medians). Depending on exactly where its boundaries fall, a census tract can change spectacularly over a decade or so without its median home value shifting that much. It would also be interesting to see age categorized by mean. Changes in population size are the least interesting to me; I want to see how home values,income levels and ages have been shifting around. Those are the variables that have the most impact on the character of a neighborhood.
Have they updated my block since I got a full-time job?