Modeled after the Buffalo Council District Information System, the Rochester Neighborhood Information System seeks to provide Rochester residents, researchers, elected officials, and other stakeholders with interactive tools for summarizing key Census Bureau data indicators at the City Council District and Neighborhood (“Data Division”) levels of analysis. Because Census data are neither collected nor published for local legislative or planning district boundaries, obtaining information at this level of analysis can be difficult. The resources below attempt to remove some of that difficulty.

Rochester Indicator Dashboard

Instructions. Use the dropdown menus at the top right of the following interface to select a Council District and/or Neighborhood. Selecting a geography will automatically zoom to that location on the map. To return to the default (Citywide) view, choose “All” from both dropdown menus. If at any time you move the map, zoom in or out (using your scrollbar or the controls in the upper left of the map), or otherwise change the map view and want to return to the default settings, click the Home icon in the upper left of the mapping window.

The population data above the map come from the 2020 U.S. Census Public Law 94-171 Redistricting data file. All indicators on the right-hand-side of the interface come from the 2015-19 U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS). ACS data were obtained at the block group-level of analysis and disaggregated to the block-level using population-weighting (the map uses 2010 geographic boundaries for consistency). Because Council Districts boundaries are not allowed to split census blocks, block-level data can be reaggregated to Census District boundaries to produce district-level indicators.

Each of the indicator bars on the right-hand-side of the interface includes a solid grey vertical line to show Citywide values. For any indicator bar, if a District’s value (e.g., poverty rate) passes the solid grey vertical line, then that District exhibits an “above-average” value for that indicator.

*Note that the official 2020 population count for Rochester was 211,328 persons. The Information System below contains data for all census blocks whose centermost points lie in the official Rochester Council District boundaries, available here. It appears that these district boundaries do not match perfectly with the Census Bureau’s boundaries for the City of Rochester, as there is a minor discrepancy of 50 persons in the total population count between official Census numbers and the Information System. This negligible difference of just 0.02% will not meaningfully affect any of the indicators shown below.*

Rochester Council District Indicator Rankings

Instructions. Use the dropdown menu at the top right of the following interface to select one of the available indicators. “Poverty” is the poverty rate for a given district (i.e., the # of people living below the federal poverty rate divided by the total population for whom poverty status is determined). “Public Assistance” shows the percentage of households in each district who receive cash public assistance or SNAP benefits. “Unemployment” shows the unemployment rate for the civilian labor force (16 years or older) by district. “School dropout” shows an estimated value of the percentage of 16-19-year-old residents in each district who dropped out of school. “No Vehicle Access” shows the percentage of households in each district who do not have access to a vehicle at home. “Renter-occupied” returns the percentage of households in each district who rent their homes. “Other vacant” shows the percentage of all housing units in each district classified by the Census Bureau as “other vacant”. Researchers use this metric as a proxy for the presence of vacant and abandoned properties in a given location. “Cost Burden” shows the percentage of households that spend 30% or more of their monthly income on housing. “Renter Cost-Burden” breaks that indicator out for renter-occupied housing units, and “Owner Cost-Burden” reports the same information for owner-occupied units. Cost-burden rates exclude units for whom cost-as-a-percentage of income were not computed. Data for these measures come from ACS Tables B25070 (renters) and B25091 (owners). Once a user selects an indicator, the barchart on the left of the interface will automatically update to rank the districts from highest value to lowest.

Rochester Data Division Indicator Rankings

Instructions. Use the dropdown menu at the top right of the following interface to select one of the available indicators for the City of Rochester’s official “data divisions“. This tool is the same as the indicator ranking tool above, but uses data divisions rather than Council Districts.