This is pretty cool; thanks!<p>My existing workflow for this kind of thing (but not down to city level) has been to start with Wikimedia Commons's SVG-ification of the county/state borders (<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Counties_with_FIPS_and_names.svg" rel="nofollow">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Counties_with_FIP...</a>), and then apply appropriate transformations to the SVG file, like shading the counties (tutorial on that at <a href="http://flowingdata.com/2009/11/12/how-to-make-a-us-county-thematic-map-using-free-tools/" rel="nofollow">http://flowingdata.com/2009/11/12/how-to-make-a-us-county-th...</a>). I might continue to use that for quick-and-dirty uses, but proper shapefile data is more flexible, and the city outlines are a very nice addition.
This is why we need to continue to advocate for open government and open access to data.<p>Weather companies like Accuweather were annoyed by the National Weather Service releasing weather data in KML form -- they saw it as a threat to their lucrative business of selling public domain weather data. Sen. Rick Sanatorum tried to come to the rescue with a bill that would limit their ability to release that data.
That should appeal the the crowd here, but we've got the data up on our service that can be exported to many other formats, including KML.<p><a href="http://market.weogeo.com/?query=census&lat=37.20852&lon=-97.69416&zoom=3&layers=BT" rel="nofollow">http://market.weogeo.com/?query=census&lat=37.20852&...</a><p>It is always good though to see governments try and make using their data easier. Quite a shift...
I have a basic app that does this using GeoServer, it's pretty simple and all open source. See <a href="http://beta.democracymap.org" rel="nofollow">http://beta.democracymap.org</a>