Is Census Tract useful?

[eric-jahn]

It's within the airs:ServiceArea type. Otherwise, we should remove it. It's not international, also.

[NeilMcKLogic]

We have just a small handful of clients who do use it. And Canada does have the equivalent notion, defined by Statistics Canada. But it seems arbitrary to include these when there are other overlapping geographical divisions that could also be consider (and I'm not advocating these either): School districts, Congressional districts, etc. In my mind, geography of any sort should be limited to entities that the common person would know where it is and that has boundaries that are clearly defined.

[georgiasales]

I think that is the reason that ZIP/postal code was selected as the lowest common denominator for geographic systems -- most people know their own ZIP/postal code but I doubt that anyone knows their census tract. Census tract was discussed as a potential way to sort out situations where an important organization's (e.g., a local public assistance office) service area split one or more ZIP codes. The problems that Neil references made that impossible, so we had to tell I&R specialists to read the information about service area if two offices were included on a search results list and select the correct one. The only ways I have heard mentioned to draw those distinctions are a) use street addresses included in the service area (what fire departments use?); or b) use a mapping tool that allows you to draw custom boundaries. That was a long time ago, so there may be a better solution now.