Geographic Units: Designated Place (DPL) Final Version March 2002

Part A - Plain Language Definition

Part B - Detailed Definition

A designated place is normally a small community or settlement that does not meet the criteria established by Statistics Canada to be a census subdivision (an area with municipal status) or an urban area.

Designated places are created by provinces and territories, in cooperation with Statistics Canada, to provide data for submunicipal areas.

Censuses: 2001, 1996

Remarks:

With the increased pace of municipal restructuring and the discontinuation of the unincorporated place (UP) program, there was a demand to expand the content of the designated place (DPL) program for the 2001 Census. Given the high volume of proposed DPL additions, Statistics Canada established more rigorous criteria for including areas in the program:

• Areas defined as designated places are usually small communities or settlements that fall below criteria established by Statistics Canada for census subdivisions (areas with municipal status) or urban areas (areas with at least 1,000 population and a population density of 400 persons per square kilometre).
• Provincial/territorial authorities must provide adequate boundary descriptions of the areas on maps.
• Designated places are usually less than 10 square kilometres in area.
• Designated places usually have a population density of 150 persons or more per square kilometre.
• The areas recognized as designated places may not represent all places having the same status within a province or territory.

The number of designated places increased from 828 in 1996 to 1,261 in 2001. Table 1 in the Introduction shows the number of designated places by province and territory. Table 9 shows the types of designated places, their abbreviated forms and their distribution by province and territory.

Table 9. Designated Place Types by Province and Territory, 2001 Census

Each designated place is assigned a four-digit code that is not unique in each of the provinces and territories. The two-digit province/territory code must precede the DPL code in order to identify each DPL uniquely in Canada.

Designated places are not required to respect census division (CD) or census subdivision (CSD) boundaries, and as a result, a number of DPLs straddle one or more CDs or CSDs. To identify these DPLs and the CSDs that they straddle, the seven-digit SGC code (PR-CD-CSD) must precede the DPL code. The DPL Part Flag identifies the number of CSDs that a DPL straddles (or into how many partitions the DPL is divided as a result of straddling a CSD or CD). The following shows how Standard Geographical Classification (SGC) codes and DPL Part Flags identify DPLs that straddle CSDs and CDs:

It is important to note that when retrieving data for entire DPLs, the PR and DPL codes are required. However, when retrieving data for each CSD component of a DPL, the PR-CD-CSD and DPL codes are required. As well, the combined PR-CD-CSD and DPL codes help to better locate DPLs within a province.

Refer to the related definitions of Census Subdivision (CSD), Locality (LOC) and Urban Area (UA).

Changes Prior to the 2001 Census:

In 1996, Statistics Canada introduced the concept of designated places as a new geographic unit for data dissemination to respond to the increasing demand for population counts and census data according to "submunicipal" or unincorporated areas. The concept generally applied to small communities for which there may have been some level of legislation, but they fell below the criteria established for municipal status.

Between 1981 and 1991, Statistics Canada had facilitated the retrieval of census data by delineating these submunicipal areas at the enumeration area level only. The number of areas delineated expanded from fewer than 50 northern communities in Manitoba in 1981, to more than 800 areas across Canada by 1996.