28 Aug
2023
28 Aug
'23
5:24 p.m.
Thanks Jonathan! I’m glad somebody makes use of the current “townships”!!
There are six townships in Arkansas with greater than 65,000 population. Hopefully you can
make use of the single-year ACS data for these six areas?
(PUMAs, based on the 2020 Census, are not in any Census 2020 product: DHC, DP, DHC-A, or
the Congressional District Summary File due out this thursday!!! Grrrrrr.)
I made a mistake in my code. I’m showing fewer townships in Arkansas than total “county
subdivisions”. This is because I filtered the COUSUB file (n=1,210) with the text
“township” — yield 1,186 records. I should have used “township” or “Township” in my
filtering, as follows:
ark_cousub <- get_decennial(year=2020, sumfile="pl",
state="AR", # state= allstates,
geography = "county subdivision",
geometry=TRUE, keep_geo_vars=TRUE,
show_call = TRUE,output="wide",
variables = selvars20) %>%
replace(is.na(.),0)
ark_cousub <- ark_cousub %>%
separate_wider_position(GEOID,c(state=2,county=3,cousub=5))
# All county subdivisions in Arkansas are townships.
ark_township <- ark_cousub %>%
filter(grepl("township|Township", NAMELSAD))
Benton County, Arkansas, has 13 townships, not so creatively named “Township 1, Benton
County” through “Township 13, Benton County”……
Pulaski County, Arkansas, has two townships, named “ Big Rock township” and “Hill
township”….
lots of fun.
On Aug 28, 2023, at 7:32 AM, jonathan lupton
<jlupton(a)Metroplan.org> wrote:
Chuck:
I grew up in Michigan, which has townships and township elections. I think this follows
the New England pattern, since Michigan was settled by westward-moving New Englanders.
However, I live in Arkansas now.
Arkansas remains one of the states which officially has townships, but so far as I have
been able to tell in 30 years working here is that they have no political status
whatsoever.
I'm not disputing they may have uses, but in the case of my region the township
boundaries are so different from economic and political reality, and overlap so many city
boundaries, that they are of little use.
The one exception is Pulaski County, the large county containing Little Rock. It is
divided into exactly two townships, one north of the Arkansas River, and one to the south.
This is helpful when going for pop totals "north of river" and south of it,
without having to go down to the level of census tracts (which also divide along the
river).
I always appreciate your analyses; keep posting them!
Thanks
Jonathan Lupton AICP
Senior Planner - Publications
Metroplan
Little Rock AR
From: Charles Purvis <clpurvis(a)att.net <mailto:clpurvis@att.net>>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2023 6:10 PM
To: The Census Transportation Products Program Community of Practice/Users discussion and
news list <ctpp(a)listserv.transportation.org
<mailto:ctpp@listserv.transportation.org>>
Subject: [CTPP News] Census 2020 counts of counties, places, county subdivisions,
townships by US state
One of the more underutilized census geographies, in my opinion, are “county
subdivisions”. I don’t think we ever tabulated and reported data for this particular
geographic level in any of our work (at MTC, SF Bay Area MPO, my tenure there between
1981-2009).
More recently, I’ve been messing around with historical census data, including county
subdivisions, focusing on California and Alameda County.
I live in what was formerly called “Eden Township” named after settlers who moved here
from Mt Eden, Kentucky in the 1850s. The term “township” in California was used between
the 1860 and 1950 Censuses, after which the Census Bureau switched to the “Census County
Division” or “CCD” concept starting in 1960 in California and other states. (CCDs were
first used in Washington State in the 1950 Census.)
So, my thought was “how many townships remain in the United States?”
A few months ago I started an R stat package analysis (tidycensus, dplyr) to find “places
called Eden” and “places called Paradise” and “places called Cupcake”…… I extended this
analysis to county subdivisions (COUSUB) and then subsetted county subdivisions with the
word “township” in their name. Alas, there are no East Cupcakes in the United States!
The resulting tally of counties, place, county subdivisions, and townships by US state is
included in links to files on my GitHub.
My r script to create this is shared, here:
https://github.com/chuckpurvis/r_scripts/blob/main/pl94171_places_called_ed…
https://github.com/chuckpurvis/r_scripts/blob/main/census2020_county_townsh…
https://github.com/chuckpurvis/r_scripts/blob/main/census2020_county_townsh…
3,221 counties in the United States (including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia)
36,678 county subdivisions in the United States (incl PR + DC)
17,701 townships in the United States (incl PR+ DC)
31,909 places in the United States (incl PR + DC)
Most counties? Texas, with 254 counties.
Most county subdivisions? Minnesota, with 2,761 county subdivisions (COUSUB)
Most townships? Minnesota, with 1,802 townships.
Most places? Pennsylvania with 1,888 places.
How many states still have townships? Fifteen.
Hope this is of interest.
Chuck Purvis,
Hayward, California
Eden Township
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