Census tract
A census tract, census area, or census
district is a geographic region defined for
the purpose of taking a census.[1] Usually
these coincide with the limits of cities, towns
or other administrative areas and several
tracts commonly exist within a county. In un-
incorporated areas of the United States these
are often arbitrary, except for coinciding with
political lines.
In the United States, census tracts are
subdivided into block groups and census
blocks. In Canada they are divided into dis-
semination areas.
Alaska
Unlike any other U.S. state, Alaska is not en-
tirely divided into county equivalents. Most of
Alaska’s area is not contained within one of
the state’s 16 boroughs. This area, referred
to by the Alaskan government as the Unor-
ganized Borough, has been divided into
census areas by the United States Census
Bureau. These census areas have no govern-
ment of their own; they exist solely to facilit-
ate Census Bureau operations.
See also: county
History
In 1905, Dr. Walter Laidlaw originated the
concept of permanent, small geographic
areas as a framework for studying change
from one decennial census to another in
neighborhoods within New York City. For the
1910 Census, eight cities—New York, Bal-
timore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Phil-
adelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis—delin-
eated census tracts (then termed ‘‘districts’’)
for the first time. No additional jurisdictions
delineated census tracts until just prior to the
1930 Census, when an additional ten cities
chose to do so. The increased interest in
census tracts for the 1930 Census is attrib-
uted to the promotional efforts of Howard
Whipple Green, who was a statistician in
Cleveland, Ohio, and later the chairman of
the American Statistical Association’s Com-
mittee on Census Enumeration Areas. For
more than twenty-five years, Mr. Green
strongly encouraged local citizens, via com-
mittees, to establish census tracts and other
census statistical geographic areas. The com-
mittees created by local citizens were known
as Census Tract Com