Important context for how to read the maps in this assessment

US Census tract level is the geography for the Opportunity Assessment and is the level that maps  within this toolkit are presented at. There are 62 census tracts included in the Assessment area.

A data range was established for each data set, and the range is divided equally into low, medium, and high categories. The tract was assigned a low, medium, or high ranking based on where it falls in the data range. The degree of opportunity or vulnerability was then identified in the maps by a light (greater opportunity/less vulnerability) to dark (lesser opportunity/ more vulnerability) color scheme. Not all data is representative of an opportunity or vulnerability, but is provided for regional context, renter and owner occupancy is a good example of this. On most of the maps, the darker colors generally represent a possible area of vulnerability or less opportunity in the community. This may be a high or low percentage or number value for that dataset. For example, when looking at distance to bus stops for households, the areas with low access to bus stops are a darker color which is a lower data percentage, and the locations with high access are light in color.

The method of analysis with “equal intervals” allows for a relative analysis of tracts based on their distribution within the metropolitan area. For some datasets, the range is very small when there is not much difference between the highest and lowest tracts. Data within each topic area has been compiled into composite indices, which again present a relative analysis of conditions among the census tracts within the metropolitan area.

In the appendix section of the Equity and Opportunity Assessment  document you will find more information on data analysis methodology, and sources. For the Assessment, data was collected from a variety of local to federal resources. This table shows the data mapped for each indicator category