What Is a Census Designated Place (CDP)? Unincorporated Areas Explained

A census designated place (CDP) is a named, settled community that has no incorporated city or town government, which the U.S. Census Bureau defines for statistical purposes. The Bureau calls CDPs "the statistical counterparts of incorporated places": they let it publish population, housing and income figures for places like Metairie, Louisiana, or The Woodlands, Texas, that are well-known communities but not legal municipalities.

The key facts, from the Census Bureau's own criteria:

• No government. A CDP has no mayor, council, city police or city taxes. Residents are governed by the county and, depending on the state, a township and special districts.
• No legal boundary. CDP boundaries are statistical. They "have no legal status" and do not change who governs the land or which services it gets.
• Drawn with local input. Tribal, state and local governments propose and update CDPs, mainly through the Bureau's Boundary and Annexation Survey and the Participant Statistical Areas Program before each decennial census.
• Rules. A CDP must be a named area with at least some population or housing; it cannot cross a state line, though it can cross a county line; and it cannot overlap an incorporated place or another CDP.

The Census Bureau treats incorporated places and CDPs together as places. In the 2024 Gazetteer, 20,291 places in the 50 states and D.C. have at least 500 residents; 6,811 of them are CDPs, home to about 40.4 million people (American Community Survey 2020-2024 estimates).

Four terms get mixed up constantly. They describe different layers of the same map:

The relationships are simple once you see them as layers. Every CDP is inside unincorporated territory, but most unincorporated land is not in any CDP; it is just county land. Townships are a separate layer that subdivides the county. In 12 states (the six New England states plus Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) the Census Bureau notes that townships or towns function as general-purpose local governments, much like cities.

Unincorporated means the land is not part of any incorporated city, town, village or borough. There is no municipal government, so the county is the main local government, often working with special districts for water, fire protection, parks or schools.

Day to day, that usually means:

• the county sheriff, not a city police department, answers calls;
• county zoning and building codes apply, and permits come from the county;
• you pay county property tax and district levies but no city property or utility taxes;
• you vote for county officials but have no city council.

Unincorporated does not mean rural. Some of the largest communities in the country are unincorporated, including most of the Las Vegas Strip, which is in the Paradise CDP of Clark County rather than inside the City of Las Vegas.

It also varies by state. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey every piece of land is in a borough, city, town or township, and those townships are full local governments. The Census Bureau still draws CDPs inside townships there, because a named village within a township has no separate government of its own. That is why Pennsylvania has more CDPs with at least 500 residents (584) than any state except California (736). Hawaii is the other extreme: it has no incorporated places at all, so every community in the state, including Honolulu, appears in Census data as a CDP.

Sixteen CDPs have more than 100,000 residents. The ten largest, by American Community Survey 2020-2024 five-year estimates:

Several of these are larger than well-known cities. Enterprise and Arlington each have more residents than Richmond, Virginia, or Spokane, Washington, in the same survey; among incorporated places, Enterprise would rank about 93rd. None of them has a mayor.

The ranking shifts between releases: ACS figures are survey estimates with margins of error, and a CDP disappears from the list the moment it incorporates and becomes a city. The populations above are five-year averages, which smooth out year-to-year noise but lag fast-growing places.

The idea is older than the name. The Census Bureau first officially recognized unincorporated places in the 1950 census, with a minimum of 1,000 residents outside urbanized areas. It renamed them census designated places in 1980, partly to make clear that the Bureau, not local law, defines them. Population minimums have since been dropped: the current criteria only require some population or housing, and the Bureau may ask for justification when a proposed CDP has fewer than ten housing units.

Before each decennial census, local governments and regional planning agencies review the existing CDPs and propose new ones or changes. The Bureau checks them against its criteria and publishes the results with the census geography, which the American Community Survey then uses. Local governments can also request CDP changes between censuses through the annual Boundary and Annexation Survey.

CDPs change for a few common reasons:

1. Incorporation. When residents vote to form a city, the CDP is replaced by an incorporated place.
2. Annexation. When a neighboring city annexes part of a CDP, the CDP shrinks, because CDPs may not overlap incorporated places.
3. Growth. New subdivisions are added to an existing CDP or become new ones.
4. Local review. Names and edges are adjusted so the CDP matches how residents describe the community.

Whether you live in a city, a CDP or plain unincorporated land changes who you call and what you pay:

• Taxes. Incorporated residents pay city taxes on top of county taxes. In a CDP you pay county and special-district taxes only. A neighbor across the city limits can have a different tax rate on an identical house.
• Services. Police, zoning, trash pickup, street maintenance and permits come from the county or a special district, not a city hall. The Census Bureau's own reference manual notes that most CDP residents receive services from county, township, special-district or nearby municipal governments.
• Elections. You vote in county races but not city ones, and local ballot measures can differ from those a mile away.
• Mailing address. Your mailing city is the name the Postal Service uses for your delivery area. It often names a nearby city even when the address is outside its limits, which is the single most common reason people think they live in a city when they do not.

The mailing-address confusion matters for forms. A form that asks for your "city of residence" for a tax or permit usually means the municipality, not the postal city; if you are unincorporated, the correct answer is often "unincorporated" plus your county.

Three quick checks:

1. Use a point-in-polygon lookup. What City Am I In tests your location against Census incorporated-place boundaries first, then against CDPs, and otherwise reports that the point is in an unincorporated area of the county. It uses simplified boundaries, so treat results within a few dozen meters of a line as approximate.
2. Confirm the county. Every address is in exactly one county or county equivalent, which governs unincorporated land. Use What County Am I In or the address to county lookup, and see How to Find Your County for edge cases like independent cities.
3. Check the official record. For anything legal or financial, your property tax bill or the county assessor's parcel record states which taxing jurisdictions apply, including whether you are inside city limits.

For a broader view of how ZIP codes, postal cities and Census geography overlap, see ZIP Code vs ZCTA.