The New York Times has an awesome feature that provides a wealth of mapped census data on every tract in the U.S. You can slice and dice the maps by race, income, housing and education, just to name a few. When you do so, you learn a lot about where we live.

Like, for example, for what I’ll call “Greater Leesburg” the side of Rt 15 you live on matters quite a lot. If you live West of Rt. 15, your neighborhood’s average income probably went up since 2000. East of Rt. 15, it probably went down.

Blue sectors are areas where incomes declined, orange sectors are areas where incomes increased.And then compare that with the median income in 2010 map.

Deep green simply designates median household incomes over $100,000. In the case of Leesburg, the two light green sectors have median incomes of $73,431 (NE Leesburg) and $82,083 (SE Leesburg), respectively. All Leesburg sectors west of Rt. 15 have median incomes over $113,000.

Something to think about when people are crying socialism and fascism over a local tax bill that might be $100 higher next year. I rather doubt it’s the people in those blue / lighter green sectors – the ones who had lower median incomes, which then declined over the past 10 years – doing the screaming.

(Crossposted from Leesburg Tomorrow. With a tip-o-the-hat to OpenLeft.)