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 Areas Reference Manual represents one of several major ongoing efforts to improve the data user community’s understanding of Census Bureau geography and its recognition of the geographic innovations introduced and considered. This manual reflects only one facet of the Census Bureau’s attempt to address the many issues associated with Census Bureau geography and its relationship to census-taking and tabulation logistics.

In 1984, the Census Bureau sponsored a National Geographic Areas Conference, followed by three Regional Geographic Areas Conferences, to consider some of the geographic issues needing resolution for future decennial and economic censuses. These conferences also provided a forum in which to gather suggestions concerning both current and possible future geographic approaches. Before these conferences, both data users and Census Bureau staff expressed a need to reexamine the definitions of the geographic areas used in the Census Bureau’s data presentations, to reconsider some of the procedures used in delineating the boundaries of those areas, and to ensure that the geographic area definitions reflected both the current and future needs of the data user community.

During 1984 and 1985, the Census Bureau presented a compilation of geographic options as part of its series of 65 Local Public Meetings—there was at least one meeting in each State, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, plus similar meetings in three Pacific Outlying Areas of the United States. In addition, there were 12 regional American Indian and Alaska Native meetings held between May 1985 and September 1986 to obtain advice from American Indian and Alaska Native populations on population and housing items, census geography, and outreach. The geographic program also formed a major component of the planning discussions at the 1986 series of 11 Product Planning Meetings held throughout the Nation, and in numerous meetings held with representatives from the State Data Centers, Census Bureau advisory committees, and officials interested in voting district data. Geographic Overview2-13