Pulling information from the Census Bureauhttp://www.census.gov/popest/counties/ and the USGSSpecifically the Board on Geographic names: http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/index.html, I’ve create two quick SVG maps as a follow on to yesterday’s map of school density in the US. The top map is the density of cities by county, while the lower map details the US Census estimated 2008 population of each county. I’ve maintained similar color schemes for each to remove any ambiguity, and while the scaling of the city density map uses the same numeric thresholds as the school density map, the population density map breaks the county population down into 6 brackets:

• 500,000 < pop
• 100,000 < pop < 500,000
• 50,000 < pop < 100,000
• 10,000 < pop < 50,000
• 1,000 < pop < 10,000
• pop < 1,000

Using the guide provided by Flowing Data, with a few modifications for reusability, I’ve generated an SVG map of the United States color coded for school (K-12) density. The original Scalable Vector Graphic map is the public domain FIPS County Code Map for the United States. School locations were compiled from SchoolDataDirect databasesState Education Data Center (Dist.). [2009/11/23]. [School District Locations and Addresses] [State Directories]. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers. Accessed on [November 23, 2009] from, http://www.SchoolDataDirect.org