The CSA project was developed to provide a common geographic boundary for reporting departmental statistics for unincorporated areas to the Board of Supervisors.

The CIO and the LA County Enterprise GIS group worked with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Unincorporated Area and Field Deputies to establish names that reflect as best as possible the general name preferences of residents and historical names of areas. A Board Motion will establish these area names as “Board Approved.” CSAs differ from the more informal “Community” geographies because:

• They are primarily focused on broad statistics and reporting, not mapping of communities.

• They represent board approved geographies comprised of Census block groups split by cities.

• They must cover the entire unincorporated County

• There can be no holes or overlapping areas

The CSAs originally were created using Census Block Groups split by cities (e.g. "Split Block Groups") as a geographic building block. These boundaries are subsequently updated as needed based on city's annexation/deannexation records.

In the City of Los Angeles, the LA City Neighborhood file was overlaid on the Block Groups and boundaries assigned using the centroid of the block group - therefore, while the names of the CSAs in LA City match the neighborhood file, the boundaries are not the same.

Additionally, CSAs are to be named according to the following recommended naming conventions:

• All names will be assumed to begin with “Unincorporated” (e.g. Unincorporated El Camino Village) for the unincorporated areas. They will not be part of the Statistical Geography Name (so the name of the Statistical Area would be “El Camino Village”).

• Names will not contain “Island” – beginning each name with “Unincorporated” will distinguish an area from any surrounding cities. There may be one or more exceptions for certain small areas (e.g. “Bandini Islands”)

• A forward slash implies an undetermined boundary between two areas within a statistical geography (e.g. Westfield/Academy Hills or View Park/Windsor Hills)

• Certain established names may include hyphens (e.g. Florence-Firestone)

• Aliases may be defined in parentheses (e.g. Unincorporated Long Beach (Bonner/Carson Park))

Data Fields:

CITY_TYPE: Incorporated cities or unincorporated areas

LCITY: Name of incoprporated cities

COMMUNITY: Unincorporated community names and LA City neighborhood names.