Demographic and Statistical Profiles for NYC Neighborhoods

A basic question that comes up fairly often - a student is interested in doing market research and they want demographic data for a specific neighborhood in NYC. Where should they look?

There are a few good places to go. A number of agencies and institutions produce profiles of neighborhoods or community districts, where they compile data from several sources into one document. These are good sources if a patron wants a lot of different information about one area - a profile. These are NOT good sources if a patron needs one piece of data for many areas (a list of all neighborhoods ranked by total population, for example) in a format that's friendly for data processing (spreadsheet).

Good sources for NYC neighborhood profiles:

NYC Dept of Planning Community District Profiles - demographic data from the Census and from surveys, vital statistics, income, land area and landuse, facilities and schools. Includes maps and charts, and a breakdown of census data for each census tract within the community district.

NYC Dept of Health Community Health Profiles - some demographic and education data, vital statistics, and the results of the department's latest health survey, which looks at smoking rates, prevalence of HIV AIDS, alcohol and drug use, immunizations, and access to healthcare facilities. Each individual report compares the indicator from the neighborhood to the rest of the borough and the city as a whole.

NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy State of NYC Housing and Neighborhoods Report - one page factsheets that include income, poverty, housing stock, homeownership, home loans, and demographic data. Shows the rank for each neighborhood and has helpful graphs for comparing the neighborhood to the city as a whole.

NYPD Crime Statistics - detailed crime statistics for each precinct. Includes some historical data.

US Census Bureau - try their population finder or quickfacts (on right-hand side of the page) to get a profile for a state, city, county, or zip code. No neighborhoods though - the census bureau does not compile data for these areas - the sources listed above use small census divisions, usually census tracts or blocks, and they add them together to create neighborhood stats.

Common question - a lot of the census data is from the year 2000 - is there anything more recent? You can get estimates for states, counties (boroughs), and cities from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. You cannot get more recent data for more detailed levels (census tracts, blocks, zip codes, or neighborhoods). Period. The Census Bureau does not compile data for these areas in non-census years (yet).

Oh OK - there is one source that is more current - The NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey, conducted by the Census Bureau and the city every three years or so. The link will take you to their main page where they have city-wide stats from the survey, but nothing for neighborhoods. There is another site that provides some neighborhood data from this survey, but it's scary and not for the faint of heart. I'll tackle this one in a future posting.