get.blocks: Get data on all US Census 2010 blocks (pop, lat/lon, area,...

In ejanalysis/UScensus2010blocks: Census 2010 Data For All US Blocks (pop, area, urban, lat/lon) (for EJ analysis, etc.)

Get data on all US Census 2010 blocks (pop, lat/lon, area, etc.)

Description

Returns a large dataframe with one row per block. This helps assemble the desired fields for all 11m+ blocks, into a single data.frame.

Usage

get.blocks(
  fields = c("fips", "pop", "lat", "lon", "area", "urban"),
  charfips = TRUE
)

Arguments

fields	Optional vector of character elements specifying which fields to return.
charfips	Optional TRUE by default, specifies if FIPS should be converted to character class with any necessary leading zeroes, which uses more RAM and takes much longer – It can take 1-2 minutes for this function to return results unless charfips=FALSE.

Details

The area is in units of square meters. Warning: It can take 1-2 minutes for this function to return results with default settings (i.e., unless charfips=FALSE is specified). The full blocks data.frame created by default uses approximately 1 GB of RAM. The blocks data.frame with just numeric fips and pop uses only about 133 MB and is

Value

Returns a (large, >11 million rows) data.frame that has specified fields or by default these 6 columns: fips, pop, lat, lon, area, urban

See Also

blocks.fips and UScensus2010

Examples

## Not run: 
# To assemble blocks data.frame:
# 1) Much faster if charfips=FALSE, but
#    then cannot treat fips as character with leading zeroes where needed:
blocks <- get.blocks( charfips=FALSE )
# To convert numeric to character fips later:
blocks$fips <- lead.zeroes(blocks$fips, 15)
# 2) Slower way, but can get fips as character to begin with:
blocks <- get.blocks()
# To get just certain fields:
blocks <- get.blocks(c('fips','pop'))
# This function using defaults is the equivalent of the following:
#   require(UScensus2010blocks)
#   blocks <- data.frame(
#     fips = analyze.stuff::lead.zeroes(blocks.fips,15),
#     pop=blocks.pop,
#     lat=blocks.lat,
#     lon=blocks.lon,
#     area=blocks.area,
#     urban=blocks.urban
#   )

## End(Not run)

ejanalysis/UScensus2010blocks documentation built on April 2, 2024, 10:10 a.m.