aggregating census tract level data

I am trying to arrive at the population data at the city level.

I understand that the variable that comes closest to a city is a "place" or msa.

my question is how can I connect the census tract level data with the msa and place within bigquery?

Thanks and regards to all the contributors!!

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  • by the way MSA is a metropolitan statistical area which is not equivalent to a city. They are made up of counties (or a single county). OMB defines these as "Metropolitan Statistical Area—A Core Based Statistical Area associated with at least one urbanized area that has a population of at least 50,000. The Metropolitan Statistical Area comprises the central county or counties containing the core, plus adjacent outlying counties having a high degree of social and economic integration with the central county or counties as measured through commuting."

  • will check out this file.  Thank you!

  • Yes.  In my case I think aggregation either at the level of a city or at the level of an msa (or a cbsa) will work.  I was having difficulty arriving at city (or msa, or cbsa..) level aggregations with some identifier.  And since I am trying to build a solution that will live in bigquery, I will try to understand and find the equivalent of the standard Census summary level codes.  Thank you so much!

  • Understood the structure of the data now - starting from your inputs.

    statistical data is under census and acs categories in bigquery public data sets.

    geographical data for the localities are available under geo_us_boundaries_ tables.

    Additionally here is a good link to bring it all together:

    https://towardsdatascience.com/a-beginners-guide-to-google-s-bigquery-gis-46a1193499ef