I downloaded Table B02018 (detailed Asian ethnicities) for all tracts in the US using the Download Center, but now that I'm working with the table, I'm seeing some tracts that have 10,000+ Asian Americans in them. That seems too high to me, I thought that tracts were supposed to have a maximum of 8,000 people.
The only explanation I can think of is that they had <= 8,000 back in 2009 when the tracts' boundaries were finalized, but now in 2012-2016, they've grown in population, but it seems hard to believe that tracts in very built up areas such as Los Angeles (where I'm seeing these large numbers) would gain that many people in just a few years.
Has anyone else ran into something like this before?
Thanks,
Diana
I went ahead and took a look at the highest Asian population tracts in the 2012-2016 ACS. The biggest one was 06059052420, with a population of 12,452, as you mention, in the Los Angeles area. I took a look at Google Earth to see if that might have any hints.
Here is a look at the area with the most recent imagery. The orange is the tract border (the boundary overlaying the Google Maps imagery comes from PolicyMap.com). The extreme northeast part of the tract which I've cropped out doesn't appear to be heavily populated.
Now, looking at Google Earth's imagery from 2010 (when the Census data comes from that would have drawn the boundary), that large development in the northeast wasn't built yet:
You can see plots being cleared, but no buildings yet.
I don't think this fully answers your question, but it's interesting to look at.