Exploring the geography of artistic occupations using ACS microdata and Tableau
This project uses 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) microdata (via IPUMS) to visualize where artists and other creative workers live across U.S. metropolitan areas.
The analysis examines both:
- Total counts of arts occupations per metro area, and
- Relative concentrations (Location Quotients) — identifying places with unusually high shares of artists relative to their total workforce.
The resulting Tableau dashboard enables users to explore artist location patterns by discipline and metro area.
View the dashboard on Tableau Public:
Where Do Artists Live?
- Source: 2022 ACS 5-year Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), approximately 17 million cases.
- Platform: Data cleaning and aggregation in R; visualization in Tableau.
- Key Variables:
OCC(Occupation)MET2013(Metro Area)PERWT(Person Weight)
Process Summary:
- Imported raw ACS PUMS data (
read.csv()). - Merged occupation and metro labels from IPUMS codebooks.
- Subset for arts-related occupations (e.g., 2600: Artists, 2752: Musicians, 2910: Photographers).
- Aggregated total weighted counts by metro area.
- Calculated Location Quotients (LQ) to standardize metro-level comparisons.
- Exported final dataset for Tableau visualization.
The Tableau dashboard includes interactive filters to:
- Select an artistic discipline (e.g., Writers, Musicians, Designers)
- Toggle between absolute and relative metro distributions
A screenshot preview:
This was my first large-scale ACS data project — an early exploration of data cleaning, aggregation, and visualization at scale. Future updates may include:
- Trend analysis across multiple ACS waves
- Integration with pandemic-era data
- Extended occupational typologies beyond the arts