As a part of the city’s Racial Equity Plan, the city has committed to collecting and analyzing meaningful data to advance racial equity in our community. Under this commitment, the city has created a dashboard to explore measures of racial equity in key areas: population, workforce, housing, income and poverty.

The dashboard allows user to compare Boulder’s metrics to similar, peer cities across the country.

American Community Survey 1-year and 5-year estimates: The American Community Survey (ACS) is a demographics survey program conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The ACS helps local officials, community leaders, and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities. It is the premier source for detailed population and housing information about our nation.

The ACS estimates below are just a subset of the data available from the ACS and cannot cover the full complexity of the lived experiences of Boulder residents. Below, we identify two important caveats that are necessary to ensure the data is interpreted constructively.

  1. The Census estimates are useful as a means of detecting systemic inequity due to racism, but not as a means of fully describing the people targeted by systemic racism.
  2. The dashboard is not intended to imply a cause-and-effect relationship between race/ethnicity and economic status. The relationship between these factors is far more complex than this data can capture. The variables and their relationships should be considered within the context of the complex, systemic inequities the city seeks to address through its racial equity work.

This dashboard compares measures for the City of Boulder to other locations in the U.S. Some visuals show measures for one location at a time. In these cases, the measure for Boulder can be found on the left, and the measure for the other location on the right. Use the dropdown menus on the right side of each page to select which location to compare.