Using Spatial Join for single point joins in ArcGIS Pro

Question

I am trying to join population and job data to service area polygons I created, summing the population and job values to the service area polgyons. I had already previously joined the population and job data to census block polygons, and then used polygon to point to create points for the centroids of the census blocks with this information.

I then tried to do a spatial join for the census block points that intersect with the service area layer, but for whatever reason, only the value of only a single point is being carried over, instead of all the points.

I selected the single point that had its data joined with the service area polygon.

Does anyone have an idea what went wrong?

Answer 1

Here's the problem: multiple census point blocks lie inside a service area, but spatial joins can only merge one point feature's attribute into the polygon.

Here's one solution: join the service area onto the census points instead of the other way around, then take across the service Id attribute. After each census point has its bounding census Id, then you can run a frequency on the census points, aggregating the values of interest by service point Id.

Once the aggregation collects the values of interest, tabular join them onto the service area polygons by their Id. After which you can theme the service areas by the aggregated, service point values.