Baltimore stats and maps

The Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance offers some great resources online.

Start with the neighborhood profiles at http://www.bniajfi.org/neighborhood_data. Of course, the 'hood you think you live in may not be the official name (i.e. there is no "East Baltimore" Community Statistical Area), so click "Choose your Community Statistical Area" under the map at the upper left of the page then and click a CSA on the resulting map. This will show you a map with the boundaries to that CSA. Repeat until you find your CSA of interest, then return to the neighborhood data page to get the stats.

The neighborhood data page has 3 sections. The first section lists the Community Statistical Area (CSA) Profiles. The individual CSAs link you to PDFs that include vital signs from the 2000 census, housing & community development stats, children and family stats, crime, workforce & economic development, sanitation facts (including the rate of rat incidents... RAT CZAR!), environment & transit data, education stats, and community action info like voting rates. Example here.

The second section on the neighborhood data page is a link to downloadable shapefiles (GIS Shapefiles page at http://www.bniajfi.org/map_gallery/gis_shapefiles). These shapefiles include Community Statistical Areas (CSAs), Neighborhood Statistical Areas (NSAs), Inner Harbor, Baltimore City Public Schools (2010-2011 School Year), Farmers' Markets, Enoch Pratt Libraries, Senior Centers, Recreation Centers, Block Groups, Census Tracts, and Zip Codes. This page also directs you to important links through the "Related Resources" right side bar, including US census maps and cartographic resources, GIS resources at the Maryland State Data Center, maps from the Baltimore City Planning Department, and National Atlas shapefiles.

The last section on the neighborhood data page include the Neighborhood Statistical Area (NSA) Profiles. The data varies for neighborhoods. For example, the Canton link simply returns a map of the Canton CSA (which includes the large section of Patterson Park but not, oddly, the small section... curious), while the link for East Baltimore Midway returns a PDF with stat summary data on demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics from the 2000 census (check it).