Geographic Units
This study analyzed the variables for geographic units within the city called Neighborhood
Statistical Areas (NSAs). The NSAs are large enough to collect and analyze community-level
data without serious error margins, and small enough to help identify variations in quality of life
scores across the city.
The 2014 NQL Study Update uses 122 NSAs
as the geographic units of analysis; the NSAs
are identical to the block groups used to gather
data for the U.S. Census.
This delineation represents a significant
change from the 2006 NQL Study, which
organized NSAs in large part around
neighborhood boundaries, as defined by City
staff. After reviewing trends in quality of life
studies (as described in the previous section),
the project team decided that moving towards
an NSA format that was compatible with the U.S. Census would allow the future NQL study
updates to easily add a wide variety of variables based on federally collected data. Moving
forward, this approach should also allow the comparison of a broader range of variables over
time.
Figure 1 on the next page presents the 2014 NSA boundaries. Figure 2, which uses the following
two pages, presents the boundaries with their respective block group IDs. Appendix B contains
an NSA profile for each of the 122 NSAs. Each profile includes maps of the NSA and its
location in the city, a set of profile variables, data for each of the 26 analytical variables with
values for citywide comparison, and whether the NSA ranked as a High Priority NSA (in the top
25 NSAs) for each variable and dimension.
November 2014
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