Avoid downloading blocks shapefile multiple times in same function call. about tidycensus

[walkerke]

Thanks for your suggestion, this is definitely do-able. It'll require some updates to tigris as it pulls in block shapefiles by state then subsets by county (as more recent TIGER/Line datasets don't make block shapefiles available by county, but 2010 does).

In the meantime I'd recommend using tigris caching with options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE); it'll download the New York shapefile once and then you won't need to download again.

[leehach]

I don't think I even realized the more recent TIGER/Line datasets offer blocks by state (no less county), since ACS doesn't release any block-level data.

In any event, I did figure out to use caching to at least avoid multiple downloads of the large file.

[walkerke]

I've pushed an update to tigris (walkerke/tigris@f2e053f) that allows for the requested behavior. Block data with geometry for 2010 is now much, much faster! Thanks for the suggestion.