It’s been a while since I last updated the acs.R package, but as noted here, I’ll be using CityState to provide updates and test-versions of the package prior to uploading to CRAN. I’m happy to report that we now have a near-final package of version 1.0.

The most significant improvements to the package (beyond those mentioned previously) are the following;

The package is now capable of downloading data directly from the new Census American Community Survey API and importing into R (with proper statistical treatment of estimates and error, variable and geographic relabeling, and more), all through a single “acs.fetch()” function;

The package includes a new “geo.make()” function to allow users to create their own custom geographies for organize and download data; and

The package provides two special “lookup” tools to help filter through all the existing Census geographies (with the “geo.lookup()” function) and tables (with the “acs.lookup()” function) to find exactly what they want. These functions return new R “lookup” objects which can be saved, manipulated, and passed to acs.fetch() for downloading data.

I want to thank the very kind folks at the Puget Sound Regional Council, who have been supporting the development of this package (in exchange for some special attention to scripts and functions they really want to include for themselves and their member communities). They continue to provide excellent help and advice “from the trenches” as we refine the package.

If you’re interested in trying out the new version, you can download it below, along with a brief set of “Introductory Notes” written for the team at PSRC. (Users may also want to check out the manual for the previous version of the package and this article from 2011 on the package.)