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13. Finding and Using Census Data from ESRI

Finding Your Data

ESRI makes census data for the United States available for free download on its website. This tutorial will walk you through finding and accessing that data, as well as fixing its projection.

1. In your web browser, navigate to the ESRI website: HTTP://ARCDATA.ESRI.COM/DATA/TIGER2000/TIGER_DOWNLOAD.CFM.

2. For this tutorial, we will access data for Atlanta, Georgia. Of course, you can find data for whichever area you are interested in. Select the state (in this case, Georgia), and click "Submit."

3. In the following dialogue, select the county for which you are interested in downloading data. (In our case, we will select Fulton county.) Then click "Submit Selection."

4. On the following page, select the data layers you would like to download for your selected county (as shown below). The click "Proceed to Download."

5. When your file is ready for download, a screen will appear indicating so. At this point, click "Download File" to download a zipped file of your data. Save this file and unzip it to access your data. As always, your shapefile(s) will be a collection of files with the same name (and different extensions). These files should all start with the letters "tgr" which indicate that they are "TIGER" files from the US Census Bureau.

6. You can add your shapefile to a map project in ArcMap and verify that it downloaded properly.

Fixing Your Projection

7. The downloaded TIGER files from ESRI come without a projection file. Luckily, we know what projection they should have and can easily fix this. If you added the file to ArcMap, remove it now. Open ArcCatalog.
8. In ArcCatalog, open the ArcToolbox and navigate to the "Define Projection" tool. You will find this in the "Data Management Tools" toolset > "Projections and Transformations" > "Define Projection." Select this tool by double-clicking it.

9. A dialogue box will appear that allows you to define the projection of any shapefile. Under "Input Dataset or Feature Class," choose your TIGER shapefile.

Then, click the icon next to "Coordinate System" to choose the appropriate coordinate system.

A dialogue box will appear that will allow you to choose your coordinate system. Click "Select."

Then select the "Geographic Coordinate System."

Then navigate through the "World" folder to "WGS 1984.prj." Highlight this projection file and click "Add."

Back in the "Spatial Reference Properties" dialogue, notice that the information for the WGS 1984 projection has populated the upper half of the dialogue. Click "OK."

Confirm that the "Coordinate System" field in the "Define Projection" dialogue now says "GCS_WGS_1984." Click "OK."

After the process run, your shapefile should now be projected with the WGS 1984 coordinate system.

Open your shapefile in ArcMap:

10. Add your TIGER shapefile to an empty, new ArcMap project. You are now ready to use this shapefile.