Data

At CityObservatory, we strive to make data the driving force behind our operations. We know that many of you share our keen interest in digging through the data, and we strongly believe that everyone benefits when data sources and methods are as transparent as possible. In the spirit of open data, we’ve created this page as a one-stop shop for the data we’ve used to generate our CityReports. We invite you to download and use this data in your city to further explore the factors that drive city success.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to email info@cityobservatory.org.

Young and Restless

Our Young and Restless report provides data on the number of four-year college graduates aged 25-34, and 25 and older for the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas, and for close-in urban neighborhoods in those metros. Data are from Census 2000, and the American Community Survey. Data can be downloaded here.

Posts: The report is here, and the overview blog post is here.

Lost in Place

Our Lost in Place data is a subset of the Brown University US 2020 Longitudinal Tract Data Base. We present tract level data on population and poverty for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000 for areas within 10 miles of the center of the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan areas.

Data can be downloaded here.

Posts: The report is here, and the overview blog post is here. An individual city dashboard is featured here, and maps for each metro are available here.

Other content: A post explaining how we did our analysis is here, our technical appendix here, and a deeper dive into the data is here and here.

Surging Center City Growth

We used the Census Bureau’s Local Employment and Housing Dynamics (LEHD) dataset to compile employment statistics for 41 of the nation’s 51 largest metropolitan aras for the years 2002, 2007, and 2011. Here we report data for the city center of each metro (an area encompassed by a 3-mile radius around the center of the region’s major central business district). Our techniques and methodology are spelled out in the appendix to this report.