Counties and Cities & Townships 2000, Twin Cities Metropolitan Area

This is a polygon dataset for county boundaries as well as for cities, township and unorganized territory (CTU) boundaries in the Twin Cities 7-county metropolitan area as of April 2000. This dataset will be kept static as of this date to be used with 2000 census data and other year 2000 data. <br/><br/>This dataset is composed of three shape files and a lookup table. <br/><br/>Census2000Counties.shp = county boundaries<br/><br/>Census2000CTUs.shp = city, township and unorganized territory boundaries<br/><br/>Census2000CountiesAndCTUs.shp = combined county and CTU boundaries<br/><br/>Census2000CountyCTULookupTable.dbf = a lookup table containing various data related to cities, townships, unorganized territories and any divisions created by county boundaries splitting them.<br/><br/><br/>NOTES:<br/><br/>- The five digit CTU codes in this dataset are identical to the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) ''Place'' codes. They are also used by the Census Bureau and many other organizations and are proposed as a MN state data coding standard.<br/><br/>- Cities and townships have also been referred to as ''MCDs'' (a census term), however this term technically refers to the part of each city or township within a single county. Thus, a few cities in the metro area that are split by county boundaries are actually comprised of two different MCDs. This was part of the impetus for a proposed MN state data standard that uses the ''CTU'' terminology for clarity.<br/><br/>- The boundary line data for this dataset comes primarily from each county, with MN/DOT data being used in Anoka County.<br/><br/>- A variety of civil divisions of the land exist within the United States. In Minnesota, only three types exist - cities, townships and unorganized territories. All three of these exist within the Twin Cities seven county area. The only unorganized territory is Fort Snelling (a large portion of which is occupied by the MSP International Airport).<br/><br/>- Some cities are split between two counties. Only those parts of cities within the 7-county area are included.<br/><br/>- Prior to the 2000 census, the FIPS Place code for the City of Greenwood in Hennepin County was changed from 25928 to 25918. This dataset reflects that change to match 2000 U.S. Census data.