Please Note: Community Reporting Areas (CRA) have been updated to follow the 2020 census tract lines which resulted in minor changes to some boundary conditions. They have also been extended into water areas to allow the assignment of CRAs to overwater housing and businesses. To exclude the water polygons from a map choose the filter, water=0.
Community reporting areas (CRAs) are designed to address a gap that existed in city geography. The task of reporting citywide information at a "community-like level" across all departments was either not undertaken or it was handled in inconsistent ways across departments.
The CRA geography provides a "common language" for geographic description of the city for reporting purposes. Therefore, this geography may be used by departments for geographic reporting and tracking purposes, as appropriate. The U.S. Census Bureau census tract geography was chosen as the basis of the CRA geography due to their stability through time and link to widely-used demographic data.
The following criteria for a CRA geography were defined for this effort:
- no overlapping areas
- complete coverage of the city
- suitable scale to represent neighborhood areas/conditions
- reasonably stable over time
- consistent with census geography
- relatively easy to use in a data context
- familiar system of common place names
- respects neighborhood district geography to the extent possible
The following existing geographies were reviewed during this effort:
- neighborhood planning areas (DON)
- neighborhood districts (DON/CNC/Neighborhood District Councils)
- city sectors/neighborhood plan implementation areas (DON)
- urban centers/urban villages (DPD)
- population sub-areas (DPD)
- Neighborhood Map Atlas (City Clerk)
- Census tract geography
- topography
- various other geographic information sources related to neighborhood areas and common place names
This is not an attempt to identify neighborhood boundaries as defined by neighborhoods themselves.
