Geographic Resources for Connecticut's new "County-Equivalent" Planning Regions
This week, the Census Bureau is releasing 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) 1-year estimates data for Connecticut’s new county-equivalent planning region geographies for the first time. Earlier this year, population estimates for planning regions were released – you can read more about those estimates and about planning regions in our blog post. This blog post provides a guide to resources for the new planning region geographies.
Counties, Councils of Governments, Planning Regions, and County-Equivalents
Connecticut abolished county governments in 1960. Instead, Connecticut has nine Councils of Governments (COGs) that oversee regional planning and programming and act similarly to counties in other states. Planning regions are administrative entities that have the same boundaries as COGs.
Census Bureau data has historically been released for the eight Connecticut counties. In 2019, the Connecticut Office of Planning and Management petitioned the Census Bureau to collect and report data for Connecticut’s nine planning regions. The Census Bureau adopted this change and started releasing data for planning regions, instead of for counties, this year. To find planning region data in Census Bureau data products, data users will still search under the “county” geography because Connecticut’s planning regions are considered county-equivalents.
Although Census Bureau data products will be labeled with planning region names, you may see both planning region and COG names in different reports and publications that use Census Bureau data. The table below shows the names of COGs, Planning Regions, and their FIPS number (their unique identifiers used across Census Bureau data products).
Geographic Resources
To help data users get started with planning region data, we’ve compiled the following resources. You can find crosswalks for other geographies on our geospatial data tools page.
Planning Region Shapefiles: The Census Bureau’s national county and county-equivalents shapefile can be downloaded here. A Connecticut Planning Regions shapefile is available from CT DEEP.
Town to Planning Region Crosswalk: This crosswalk shows each town’s planning region. This crosswalk shows each town’s county.
Census Tract and Block Crosswalks: These crosswalks link census blocks and census tracts to towns, counties, country equivalents/planning regions, ZIP codes, PUMAs, and secondary school districts. They contain identifiers for both 2020 and 2022 tract FIPS codes, which include the tract’s county (2020) and planning region (2022) codes. There were no geographic changes to blocks or tracts between 2020 and 2022 – only the FIPS codes have changed.
ZIP Code to Planning Region Crosswalk: This crosswalk shows each ZIP Code Tabulation Area in Connecticut along with the planning region it falls within. The crosswalk is approximate because some ZIP codes cross planning region boundaries, so they are allocated based on their geographic center.
Census Bureau Relationship Files: The Census Bureau released relationship files between congressional districts and state legislative districts to county-equivalents, as well as county subdivisions (towns) to blocks, tracts, ZCTAs, and PUMAs. You can also find a county subdivision to county/county equivalent crosswalk here.
To learn more about the Census and resources provided by CTData, head to our Census Data portal. Explore other data sets and analysis at data by topic and data projects. Access our Census Tools and Resources for your own census data project. You can stay up-to-date on the latest data and tools by subscribing to our newsletter and following CTData on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.