Redlands, California—July 28, 2011— Urban Policy and the Census, the latest book from Esri Press, helps researchers and policy analysts gain a comprehensive understanding of census data and how it can be most effectively used for population research, policy planning, and decision-making.

Written by Heather MacDonald and Alan Peters, the book details a methodology for the spatial analysis of decennial census and American Community Survey data in areas including

            ● Demographics

            ● Economics

            ● Housing

“GIS analysis offers useful ways to interpret and communicate meaningful information, but to do so analysts need to consider the broader context of how that information is produced and the technical limitations of that information,” says MacDonald.

 MacDonald, a former associate professor in the urban and regional planning program at the University of Iowa, is a senior lecturer and course director of planning in the School of the Built Environment at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia.  

Peters previously held the positions of professor and chair of urban and regional planning at the University of Iowa, and is now a professor in the faculty of the built environment at the University of New South Whales. Peters and MacDonald also wrote Unlocking the Census with GIS (Esri Press, 2004).

Urban Policy and the Census (ISBN: 978-1-58948-222-7, 200 pages, $49.95 USD) is available at online retailers worldwide, at esri.com/esripress, or by calling 1-800-447-9778.  Outside the United States, visit esri.com/esripressorders for complete ordering options, or visit esri.com/distributors to contact your local Esri distributor. Interested retailers can contact Esri Press book distributor Ingram Publisher Services.

About Esri Press

Esri Press publishes books on GIS, cartography, and related topics. The complete selection of GIS titles from Esri Press can be found on the Web at esri.com/esripress.

About Esri

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

Contact:

Jim Baumann
Esri
Tel.: 909-793-2853, extension 1-1807
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