We believe in useful data

mySidewalk collects, cleans, transforms, calculates, and updates data from thousands of raw data tables from more than 40 of the most trusted sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, USDA, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and many more, to create a unified data system and power user-friendly tools.

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You can, where publicly available, download source data. However, the data in mySidewalk is proprietary and not available anywhere else. mySidewalk collects, cleans, transforms, calculates, and updates data from thousands of raw data tables to create a unified data system called WhereHouse. WhereHouse is a unified and structured database that can be queried using space, time, metadata, and measurement values within. To unify the many sources in WhereHouse, the source data is researched, enriched, and improved according to our metadata model.

As a result, WhereHouse contains more geographies, sources, and years of coverage in a single database than any other single source.

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Data updates or is added to mySidewalk on a near-weekly basis. Each individual data source updates on an annual, biannual, rolling, and even monthly update intervals, which works out to new data in mySidewalk on a near-weekly basis.

Updates are dependent upon the data being available from the provider. Delays by the provider are often not posted or communicated and some providers don't announce when new data is available. mySidewalk works to turn around new data quickly once it is made available, typically within 4 business weeks.

Follow along mySidewalk's data release notes. →

One advantage of mySidewalk’s data library is that it includes historical Census estimates alongside current data, allowing users to see how certain indicators have changed over time. But, comparing data from different Census years is not as straightforward as it may seem. The main reason is that the shapes and boundaries for most Census geographies change over time for a variety of reasons.

mySidewalk uses a technique called harmonization to bring historical data to the most up-to-date geographic boundary, ensuring that you can make apples-to-apples historical comparisons.

Major updates to Census boundaries generally coincide with the release of decennial Census data. Since the most recent major update to Census geography boundaries occurred with the release of the 2020 Census, it was necessary to use geographic harmonization to support Census 1990, Census 2000, and Census 2010 data alongside other Census products in our data library.

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