2009 TIGER/Line Shapefiles Released

census.gov

15 points·drp··6 comments

FYI for those interested in working with this data in a Geo-enabled RDBMS: It's pretty easy to get most of this data into a database on your own using GeoDjango. A simple non-TIGER tutorial is here: http://geodjango.org/docs/tutorial.html

Even if you're not interested in using Django in the long run, it's a quick way to get the data into a familiar system and poke around with it a bit.

Could someone comment on the state of the Tiger data. I tried to use it for an online trailer tracking application in the late 90's but it was very poor quality.

If you ever want a free source of geographical and street data, this is the way to go. Some local cities, counties and states also offer even more up to date files (I find the census one to be a few months out dated for new streets and neighbourhoods).

Hey, what do you use these for? I ask because we have used a lot of census geo-data for TrailBehind.com.

Used to do urban car rallying and was writing a custom mapping app specifically for that (up-to-date street data was pretty important as the city I was in was fast growing and always under construction).

Not using for anything now, although this has sparked my interest again :)

The thing that kills me is the websites that slurp this data and then will spit back info for literally hundreds of dollars.

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