The BBSP Deadline Passed. Now What? A Guide for Local Officials

The BBSP Deadline Passed. Now What? A Guide for Local Officials

The Block Boundary Suggestion Project (BBSP) exists so that states can identify non-standard features often used as electoral boundaries (power lines, property lines, or streams) that could serve alongside more traditional features (such as street centerlines) as census tabulation block boundaries. States, through their official liaisons, may also identify features that are not desirable as block boundaries. In addition, legal boundaries reviewed in coordination with the annual Boundary and Annexation Survey also become census tabulation block boundaries. Where no suggestions are submitted, local precinct boundaries following features the Bureau does not already carry are unlikely to appear as census block…
Read More
BBSP vs. BAS: Two Census Programs, Two Crucial Jobs

BBSP vs. BAS: Two Census Programs, Two Crucial Jobs

The Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS) and the Block Boundary Suggestion Project (BBSP) are often conflated; both involve local geography and the Census Bureau, but they do different jobs. BAS is the Bureau's annual survey to keep the legal boundaries and names of governments current, such as city limits, county lines, township boundaries, and tribal areas. BBSP is a once-a-decade phase of the Redistricting Data Program in which a state suggests which features the Bureau should use as statistical census tabulation block (census block) boundaries. The other differences follow from that split. BAS runs every year, and each eligible government…
Read More
From 1990 to 2030: A Short History of the Census Block-Boundary Suggestion Project

From 1990 to 2030: A Short History of the Census Block-Boundary Suggestion Project

The Block Boundary Suggestion Project (BBSP) is now in its fourth decade. It began as part of the Census Bureau's first nationwide Redistricting Data Program for the 1990 Census, following a 1984 pilot test that yielded positive results, which led to its full implementation. While census blocks were first used in 1940, only for cities of 50,000 or more inhabitants and other governments that contracted for the work, they were first used nationwide in 1990. Along with the nationwide census block-numbering system, which gave states the small-area geography they needed to meet Voting Rights Act obligations and minimal-population-deviation districting standards, BBSP helped move redistricting…
Read More