A census-designated place (CDP) is a community recognized by the US Census without legal status or government services. CDPs lack incorporation and rely on regional services. They have no population threshold and are determined by census officials. Demographic data can be obtained from the US Census.
A census-designated place (CDP) is a categorization used by the United States Census for the purpose of collecting and categorizing data. Census-designated places are locally recognized communities with population groups that lack legal status such as incorporation within the states in which they are located. An example of a census-designated place would be a small cluster of houses well outside any nearby city, town, or village in a rural area where 150-200 people live. There are no company population thresholds for a CDP; generally, they have a population of around 3,500.
Several characteristics differentiate a census-designated place from other “places” or population centers. The first is the lack of incorporation. The second is the lack of government and municipal services. While a census-designated place may be a thriving community, it lacks elected officials, a police force, and similar services, but instead relies on services provided to the region at large. For example, law enforcement might be performed by county sheriffs. Since the CDPs are not officially recognized, their boundaries are determined by census officials based on information from local residents and neighboring officials. They may not be located within incorporated places and, in some states, may not even directly abut incorporated places.
Local residents also use a specific name to refer to a census-designated place, and this name may be recognized by the Postal Service for delivery purposes and published in records pertaining to that place. Street signs and other signage would also include the local name for the CDP and the name should be distinguished from nearby incorporated place names. Determining that a place should be treated as a census-designated place confers no legal status, with the term used primarily for the convenience of the census. A CDP can be just outside a municipality or it can be quite remote, depending on the region.
The census has been collecting information on “unincorporated places” since the mid-1800s, when census takers began to recognize that such places often had a location in regional communities, even if they were unincorporated and legally recognized. Definitions of such places varied, as did trends in data collection, until 1950, when the United States Census officially began including “unincorporated places” and later “census-designated places” in its data collection.
Demographic data on these places and their residents can be obtained from the US Census. Especially in rural areas, such information can be very interesting, as it can reveal radical differences in socioeconomic status and race among small communities that might not otherwise be counted.
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