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 Chapter 9

The Bureau of the Census defines a place as a concentration of population; a place may or may not have legally prescribed limits, powers, or functions. This concentration of population must have a name, be locally recognized, and not be part of any other place.

A place either is legally incorporated under the laws of its respective State, or a statistical equivalent that the Census Bureau treats as a census designated place (CDP). Each State enacts laws and regulations for establishing incorporated places. The Census Bureau designates criteria of total population size, population density, and geographic configuration for delineating CDPs. Not everyone resides in a place; in 1990, approximately 66 million people (26 percent) in the United States lived outside of any place, either in small settlements, in the open countryside, or in the densely settled fringe of large cities in areas that were built-up, but not identifiable as places.

The greater number of places reported in the decennial censuses (19,289 out of a total of 23,435 in 1990) are incorporated. Most of these incorporated places have active governments; that is, they have either elected or appointed officials, usually raise revenue, and perform general-purpose local government functions. Incorporated places that have inactive governments generally do not have officials or provide governmental services, but, like active places, they do have legally established corporate limits, and may choose to reactivate at any time. The Census Bureau includes, in the decennial census, all active incorporated places and inactive incorporated places for which it has certified corporate limits as of January 1 of the census year (the date used to tabulate the census results).

The Census Bureau recognized 4,146 CDPs for the 1990 decennial census. These entities, though containing nearly 30 million people, have no separate governments, although most of their residents receive governmental services from county, minor civil division (MCD), special regional or nearby municipal governments. CDPs usually physically resemble incorporated Places9-1