Census-designated Place - Purpose of Designation

Purpose of Designation

There are a number of reasons for the CDP designation:

• The area may be more urban than its surroundings, having a concentration of population with a definite residential nucleus, such as Whitmore Lake, Michigan, or Hershey, Pennsylvania.
• A formerly incorporated place may disincorporate or be partly annexed by a neighboring town, but the former town or a part of it may still be reported by the census as a CDP by meeting criteria for a CDP. An example is the former village of Covedale (village in Ohio), compared with Covedale (CDP), Ohio.
• The area may contain an easily-recognizable institution, usually occupying a large land area, with an identity distinct from the surrounding community. This could apply to large military bases (or parts of a military base) that are not within the limits of any existing community, such as Fort Campbell North or Fort Knox, Kentucky. Another example is Stanford, California, which houses the Stanford University campus.
• In some cases, a CDP may be defined for the urbanized area surrounding an incorporated municipality, but which is outside the municipal boundaries, for example the former CDPs of Greater Galesburg, Michigan or Greater Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
• In other cases, the boundary of an incorporated place may bisect a recognized community. An example of this is Bostonia, California, which straddles the city limits of El Cajon. The USGS places the nucleus of Bostonia within El Cajon. The Bostonia CDP covers the greater El Cajon area in unincorporated San Diego County that is generally north of that part of Bostonia within El Cajon.
• The Census Bureau treats all townships as unincorporated places, even in those states where townships are incorporated under state law. This is so even in those states (i.e., Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey and South Dakota) where the Census Bureau acknowledges that "All townships are actively functioning governmental units."
• In some states, a CDP may be defined within an incorporated municipality that (for the purposes of the census) is regarded as a minor civil division. For example, towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut are incorporated municipalities, but may also include both rural and urban areas. CDPs may be defined to describe urbanized areas within such municipalities, as in the case of North Amherst, Massachusetts.
• Some CDPs represent an aggregation of several nearby communities, for example Shorewood-Tower Hills-Harbert, Michigan or Egypt Lake-Leto, Florida. However, the Census Bureau will be discontinuing this method for the 2010 Census.
• Hawaii is the only state that has no incorporated places recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau below the county level. All data for places in Hawaii reported by the census are CDPs.
• In some states, the Census Bureau may designate an entire minor civil division (MCD) as a CDP (for example West Bloomfield Township, Michigan or Reading, Massachusetts). Such designations are used in states where the MCDs function with strong governmental authority and provide services equivalent to an incorporated municipality (New England, the Middle Atlantic States, Michigan, and Wisconsin). MCDs appear in a separate category in census data from places (i.e., incorporated places and CDPs); however, such MCDs strongly resemble incorporated places, and so CDPs coterminous with the MCDs are defined so that such places appear in both categories of census data. This practice will no longer be used in the 2010 Census.