Communities

The Communities layer was created in 2009 to describe areas often referenced by denizens, as many areas of the County are not within an official municipality with city limits. The five Regional Services Center directors at the time worked with DTS-GIS (now TEBS) staff to create geographic areas with which citizens identify, since some of the general place names such as “Bethesda” and “Silver Spring” can cover large swaths of the County and are not specific enough for certain purposes. At first, they looked at existing layers such as Census Designated Places, Zip Codes, and municipalities, but the directors found that these other layers either didn't cover the entire County or else didn't really represent the locations to which citizens commonly refer. DTS-GIS staff prepared paper maps for the directors so they could use existing geographic features as a guide as they marked areas within their own service regions. The polygons in this layer are the result of that effort. Can be downloaded from the GIS Data Portal here.本社区图层（Communities layer）于2009年创建，用于描述居民常提及的区域——因本县诸多区域并不隶属于设有城市边界的官方市政辖区。彼时五名区域服务中心（Regional Services Center）主管与DTS-GIS（现更名为TEBS）的工作人员合作，创建居民所认可的地理区域：诸如贝塞斯达（Bethesda）、银泉（Silver Spring）这类通用地名覆盖本县大片区域，在部分场景下指代不够精准。起初，他们参考了普查指定地点（Census Designated Places）、邮政编码区域（Zip Codes）以及市政辖区等现有图层，但主管们发现，这些现有图层要么无法覆盖全县范围，要么未能真实体现居民日常所指代的区域。DTS-GIS的工作人员为主管们制作了纸质地图，以便他们以现有地理特征为参照，在各自服务辖区内标记区域。本图层中的多边形要素便是此项工作的成果。该数据集可从此处的地理信息系统数据门户（GIS Data Portal）下载。