census-cb

census-cb is a wrapper for downloading and processing Cartography Boundaries from the US Census Bureau. It stands for Census Cartographic Boundaries; apparently that's confusing (but, like most things, it made sense at the time).

The goal of census-cb is to provide an easy way to get GIS information created by the United States Census Bureau. There's a wide variety of cartographic files availbable for download, such as state and county lines, voting district, Tribal subdivisions, and more!

Entity Information

There are a designated set of entities available for download from the census bureau. Each year of available data has a specific set of available entities, and the shape of these entities may change from year to year. You can find a full list pdf of available entities for download on the US Census Bureau site.

Installation

Install using pip

pip install census-cb

Usage

# import census_cb
from census_cb.census_cb import *

# Create a Boundary File for the desired entity
bf = BoundaryFile(2020, 'us', 'state', '500k')

# Create a processor for downloading and unpacking the data; this processor will return a GeoDataFrame
cbfp = CBFProcessor('gdf')

# Downloads and extracts the Boundary File.
cbfp.process_data(bf)

Examples

Download and display the state boudnaries from the US Census Bureau.

# Create a Boundary File for the US State Lines
state_boundary_file = BoundaryFile(2020, 'us', 'state', '500k')

# Create a processor that returns a GeoDataFrame
cbfp = CBFProcessor('gdf')

# Get the Data
state_lines = cbfp.process_data(state_boundary_file)

# See the Data
state_lines.plot()
state_lines.head()

	geometry	STATEFP	STATENS	AFFGEOID	GEOID	STUSPS	NAME	LSAD	ALAND	AWATER
0	MULTIPOLYGON (((144.64538 13.23627, 144.64716 ...	66	01802705	0400000US66	66	GU	Guam	00	543555847	934337453
1	MULTIPOLYGON (((-94.71830 29.72885, -94.71721 ...	48	01779801	0400000US48	48	TX	Texas	00	676680588914	18979352230
2	MULTIPOLYGON (((-86.95617 45.35549, -86.95463 ...	55	01779806	0400000US55	55	WI	Wisconsin	00	140292246684	29343721650
3	MULTIPOLYGON (((-71.28802 41.64558, -71.28647 ...	44	01219835	0400000US44	44	RI	Rhode Island	00	2677759219	1323691129
4	MULTIPOLYGON (((-72.03683 41.24984, -72.03496 ...	36	01779796	0400000US36	36	NY	New York	00	122049520861	19256750161

To Do

• provide some better functionality for editing Entity Information after a BoundaryFile object is declared.