Tell me more ×
Geographic Information Systems Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for cartographers, geographers and GIS professionals. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 9 down vote favorite

Where can I find a shapefile that contains boundaries for the major cities in the United States?

I have tried the census website but could not find anything.

share|improve this question
1  
Possible duplicate of gis.stackexchange.com/questions/495/… – Chethan S. May 25 '11 at 17:16
2  
@Chethan Good call, but the other question specifically asks about non-US data, so it's not really an exact duplicate. – whuber♦ May 25 '11 at 18:05

3 Answers

up vote 7 down vote

did you look at the TIGER data from the census bureau? They are available at http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/

share|improve this answer
1  
For the most part, you can get incorporated cities with the Places layer (but beware the Census Designated Place! Take a deep breath and dive into Census definitions here: census.gov/geo/www/2010census/gtc_10.html). The County Subdivision layer may also be helpful. – neuhausr May 27 '11 at 14:15
up vote 4 down vote

A bit old but vaild.

http://www.census.gov/geo/cob/bdy/cc/cc00shp/cc99_d00_shp.zip

http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/cc2000.html

share|improve this answer
up vote 3 down vote

You don't say if you are using esri or not.
ESRI Products come with a "data and maps" dvd.
It is not in shp but can be selected and converted to shape using arcmap.
I installed mine on a network drive in the mapdata folder. The rest of the path is like this.
G:\MapData\ESRI_Data\streetmap_na\data\citylim.sdc

share|improve this answer

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.