​​SpeedUpAmerica - Vector Tilesets & Boundaries
​​The following is an easy-to-use method for converting Census Tract data to Vector Tilesets. 

​​Requirements

  1. ​​MacOS or a Linux OS Terminal - Will not work on Windows (Use Virtual Machine)
  1. ​​Command Line Tools - GIT, MAKE, G++, LIBSQLITE3-DEV, ZLIB1G-DEV, jq
​​Linux Commands:
​​$ sudo apt-get install git make build-essential g++ libsqlite3-dev \
​​  zlib1g-dev gdal-bin jq
  1. ​​Follow the instructions and install Mapbox - Tippecanoe 
​​
  • ​​Note: Keep Terminal open in the Tippecanoe directory, this will make your life easier

​​Tileset Creation Steps:

  1. ​​Get the data. Visit https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2017/TRACT/ and find the corresponding zip. Oregon Census Tract FIPS Code is 41, thus “tl_2017_41_tract.zip”.
  1. ​​Add the full file name to the URL, for example if I want “tl_2017_41_tract.zip”, run the commands:
​​
​​$ curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2010/TRACT/2000/tl_2017_41_tract.zip
​​$ unzip tl_2017_41_tract.zip
​​$ ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON oregon_41_tracts.shp.json tl_2017_41_tract.shp
​​$ tippecanoe -zg -o oregon_41_tracts.mbtiles -l oregon_census oregon_41_tracts.shp.json
​​
  • ​​Note: Name the output GeoJSON file (Line 3: oregon_41_tracts.shp.json) to describe the file.
​​
  1. ​​The Vector Tileset file in this example is oregon_41_tracts.mbtiles. 
  1. ​​Success! You can upload this .mbtiles to Mapbox Studio as “New tileset”
​​
​​You should see the following when you click on your new tileset; the properties are required.
​​
 
User-uploaded image: image.png
​​Mapbox Vector Tileset with required properties - Success
​​

​​Known Issues when Installing

​​If at any point you get errors run $ make clean - better to cleanup the directory first and try again
  • ​​$ sudo apt-get install make - will fix make command not found
  • ​​$ sudo apt-get install update; sudo apt-get install build-essentials - install g++ used by the Makefile in Tippecanoe
  • ​​$ sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev - sqlite3.h: No such file or directory
  • ​​$ sudo apt install zlib1g-dev - zlib.h: No such file or directory

​​Understanding US Census definitions of a Geography and FIPS CODES

​​

​​Boundaries

​​The new boundaries​ table is populated using the populate_boundaries​ rake task. That rake task contains a hash of boundary types to files containing those types. Adding new boundaries is as simple as adding types and files to this hash. 
​​
​​The files are created from Shapefiles like so:
​​$ ogr2ogr -f GeoJSON  tl_2018_us_county.shp.json tl_2018_us_county.shp
​​$ jq -r '.features[] | tostring' tl_2018_us_county.shp.json > tl_2018_us_county.json
​​
​​Once the files are created upload them the public S3 data bucket, update the buildspec.yml​ to download the files, and make sure to update the README. Make sure to include an updated dump of the boundaries table in in the PR and update the README.

​​Useful script

​​#!/bin/bash
​​
​​for i in $(seq -f "%02g" 1 56)
​​do
​​        curl -L -O https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2018/TRACT/tl_2018_${i}_tract.zip