GovHub's Census Shape Converter

The Census Shape Converter, (or CSC, for lack of a better name,) helps decipher the vast U.S. government repository of map shapes from the 2010 census into .kml files, a more universal format.

Currently, CSC does these things:

1. Grabs an archive from the U.S. Census FTP archive.
2. Converts your choice of Congressional Districts, States, Counties, or Localities to .kml format
3. Separates the different maps into a coherent file structure.
4. (Optionally) reduces the size of the .kml file using the Douglas-Peuker algorithm.

Installation

CSC is designed to be run from the command-line, so there's no trickery to installing it.

You will have to install its one dependency, the GDAL/OGR Binaries, which are used for conversion to .kml. Follow the instructions in the GDAL Readme to add ogr2ogr to your ~/.bash-profile.

After that, just run php convert.php in the command-line, and the script will guide you through the rest.

@Todo

• Support other regions, e.g. school districts, zip codes, etc.

Credits

• Jlogsdon's php-cli-tools
• Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
• The U.S. Census Bureau