2020 Cartographic Boundary File (SHP), 2020 Urban Areas for United States, 1:500,000

Description

The 2020 cartographic boundary shapefiles are simplified representations of selected geographic areas from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). These boundary files are specifically designed for small-scale thematic mapping. When possible, generalization is performed with the intent to maintain the hierarchical relationships among geographies and to maintain the alignment of geographies within a file set for a given year. Geographic areas may not align with the same areas from another year. Some geographies are available as nation-based files while others are available only as state-based files. After each decennial census, the Census Bureau delineates urban areas that represent densely developed territory, encompassing residential, commercial, and other nonresidential urban land uses. In general, this territory consists of areas of high population density and urban land use resulting in a representation of the urban footprint. There are 2,645 Urban Areas (UAs) in this data release with either a minimum population of 5,000 or a housing unit count of 2,000 units. Each urban area is identified by a 5-character numeric census code that may contain leading zeroes.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
55 Entity and attribute file https://meta.geo.census.gov/data/existing/decennial/GEO/CPMB/boundary/2020/shp/19110/cb_2020_us_ua20_500k.shp.ea.iso.xml
33 The file naming convention for the cartographic boundary files. https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/GENZ2020/2020_file_name_def.pdf
33 General description of the cartographic boundary files and their appropriate use. https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/GENZ2020/description.pdf
57 The cartographic boundary files are simplified representations of selected geographic areas specifically designed for small scale thematic mapping. These files contain simplified extracts of selected geographic areas from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File/Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) database. https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/GENZ2020/shp/cb_2020_us_ua20_500k.zip

Tags

  • shp
  • generalized
  • urbanized area
  • 2020
  • uc
  • us
  • urban area
  • cartographic boundary
  • united states of america (the)
  • urban cluster
  • ua

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