Massachusetts 2000 Urban Boundaries

In 2000, the Census Bureau used the Census Block Group data to designate the urban boundaries by following the Census Bureau maintained road segments called TIGER. The Office of Transportation Planning, in cooperation with the regional planning agencies, adjusted the boundaries to follow the Road Inventory street segments, municipal boundaries, railroads, or water bodies. This polygon datalayer represents the final version of the adjusted urban boundaries, which is used to determine the Road Inventory official roadway functional classification. The urban boundaries were digitized with the aid of 1:5000 road inventory, rail lines, streams, and MassGIS survey-level town boundaries. MassGIS stores this layer as MA2000URBBND_POLY.