Data notes
Trust comes
with footnotes.
Every City Atlas number should be understandable, repeatable, and attributed to its primary source.
Edition status
First Census release
This edition covers the 100 most populous Census places in the 50 states, ranked by the 2025 Population Estimates Program. Records are generated at build time by the project’s Census refresh script.
Primary sources
Public data at the foundation.
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey
- 2020-2024 ACS 5-year Data Profiles provide age, income, housing, educational attainment, commute, and transportation measures for Census places.
- U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates
- 2025 annual place estimates rank the initial 100 places and provide population change. They are labeled separately from ACS survey estimates.
- U.S. Census Bureau, TIGERweb
- January 1, 2025 Census place boundaries provide land area, population density, and the static profile-boundary illustrations.
Definitions
Comparisons require consistent terms.
“Place” means Census place geography. The first release includes the 50 states and excludes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and territories. “Median” is the midpoint of a distribution, not an average. Density uses 2025 Population Estimates divided by TIGERweb land area.
Limits
Useful data is not perfect data.
ACS values are survey estimates and have margins of error. Place boundaries do not match metropolitan areas or people’s lived geographies. We publish source vintage, definitions, and caveats beside each number rather than imply false precision.