PUMA Delineations for 2020
As the Census State Data Center, CTData is required to delineate the 2020 PUMA boundaries. An important component of this delineation process is to elicit community feedback from the data users in our state. We began this process in December during our conference session, “PUMAS: What are they and how you can help,” where we laid out the background of what PUMAs are and why this issue matters on our website as well as through an Op-Ed published by the CT Examiner. We also spent time creating options for the 2020 PUMAs so that data users could respond to them at a meeting we held this week.
We made progress in identifying the best options for each of the four planning regions that required additional decisions. In the spirit of transparency, we wanted to document these decisions and briefly explain how they came about. We are still seeking input on the Capitol region and this post will be updated when that is obtained.
A quick note: If you are new to this issue, please explore the background here. We also explained our priorities and thought process behind the decisions we did make, and those we need to make, which you can read about here. The state is moving to the planning regions as our county equivalencies, so we attempted to keep the PUMA boundaries within planning regions.
Naugatuck Valley planning region
This group noted that the commuter and economic patterns would lead us to move Middlebury to be with the northern towns — Woodbury, Watertown, etc. There was discussion about moving Prospect but it was decided it should remain connected with Chesire.
There was discussion about having Naugatuck join Waterbury, however, Census Bureau guidelines emphasize keeping urban areas as their own PUMAs.
The group also discussed names and decided on the Lower Naugatuck Valley as the southern PUMA (shaded in blue), and the northern PUMA to be called Waterbury Suburban/Bristol.
Northeast, Southeast, and Capitol planning regions
The Northeast planning region population falls under 100,000, and so CTData proposed to bring 2 towns from the Southeast region into the Northeast PUMA. One of these towns was Lisbon, which we discovered has a lot of commercial activity and would be difficult for the Southeast to not have in their data. Both the Northeast and Southeast folks in the meeting said that this would not be desirable, but that Windham would be preferable. However, in further consultation, it became clear that Windham was not a good option for increasing the size of the Northeast PUMA for several reasons (the demographic makeup of Windham is very different from the rest of the region and it is much larger than the other towns, among other reasons). Instead, in conversation with people at the Northeast Connecticut COG, the idea was put forward for Stafford and Willington (in the Capitol region) to go into the Northeast planning region’s PUMA. This is the current proposal. The updated Southeast map is forthcoming.
Captiol Option 3 + Northeast
During the meeting, one group met to discuss the Capitol region PUMA. This group recognized that the eastern towns of this region naturally fit as a separate PUMA, and Marlborough fit better with this configuration of towns, due to its rural setting, than with Wethersfield, Rocky Hill, and Newington. In addition, representatives from the Capitol Connecitcut Council of Governments agreed that the PUMA with Southington, Plainville, Berlin, and New Britain made a good deal of sense.
This group had hoped that we could create a PUMA specifically with inner ring suburbs of Hartford. However, the populations of the remaining outer ring towns would not meet the 100,000 population threshold to serve as a separate PUMA.
The group discussed whether Bloomfield, which has both urban and non-urban areas, fit more with its neighbors to the south and west, or with towns to the north and east. This group, along with representatives from the Capitol planning region, thought it made most sense to include Bloomfield with the Windsor area towns, and keeping the Farmington Valley towns as one PUMA.
In addition, several small group members and the Capitol planning region representatives considered Vernon demographically most similar to East Hartford and Manchester than to Bolton, Coventry, and other towns to the East. Vernon’s population increases the Manchester-East Hartford PUMA, which was one of the smallest in CT before the 2020 delineation process.
Western planning region
While there wasn’t representation for the Western planning region for this meeting, in further consultation, CTData obtained feedback from the Western Connecticut COG. They advised that Bethel and Newtown are Danbury suburbs and have a strong relationship to Danbury as the central city, and should therefore be in the same PUMA. In addition, Darien and new Canaan are similar and have a strong relationship to each other, and would be best to keep them together (one of our options had separated these towns into different PUMAs). This map is the proposed option for the Western planning region.
CTData continues to work on this issue and is accepting input until January 14, 2022. If you have feedback or suggestions on any of the above map, please use the form below. You may also explore all of the proposed options, or learn more about the background of this topic.