Annual Boundaries Data

The urban accessibility (UA) classification measures the degree of urban influence New Zealand’s urban areas have on surrounding rural areas. It classifies the geographic accessibility of rural statistical area 1s (SA1s) and small urban areas according to their proximity, or degree of remoteness, to larger urban areas. This classification provides increased understanding of the heterogeneity of rural areas and small urban areas and will allow more extensive analysis and reporting. Understanding the degree of urban accessibility or remoteness is important as it has a major influence on the employment sector, accessibility to services, and population composition and change.

The methodology uses drive time from an SA1 address weighted centroid to the outside boundary of the nearest major, large, and medium urban area (from Stats NZ urban rural (UR) classification) to classify rural SA1s and small urban areas to one of five categories of accessibility or remoteness. The Open Source Routing Machine service using the OpenStreetMap road network is used to calculate the drive times.

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A concordance between SA1 and Urban Accessibility can be found on Aria.

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Urban accessibility indicator is also available as an attribute on Statistical Area 1 Higher Geographies 2021 (generalised).

Rural SA1s and small urban areas are classified to the following categories:

·High urban accessibility:
0 to15 minutes from major urban areas

·Medium urban accessibility:
15 to 25 minutes from major urban areas
0 to 25 minutes from large urban areas
0 to 15 minutes from medium urban areas

·Low urban accessibility:
25 to 60 minutes from major or large urban areas
15 to 60 minutes from medium urban areas

·Remote:
60 to 120 minutes from major, large or medium urban areas

·Very remote:
more than 120 minutes from major, large or medium urban areas

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For more information refer to: Urban accessibility - methodology and classification.

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The full classification is shown below:

111 Major urban area

112 Large urban area

113 Medium urban area

221 High urban accessibility

222 Medium urban accessibility

223 Low urban accessibility

224 Remote

225 Very remote

331 Inland water

332 Inlet

333 Oceanic

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Areas of 221 High urban accessibility and 222 Medium urban accessibility may be regarded as peri-urban in nature and combined with urban areas for analytical purposes.

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This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

The urban accessibility (UA) classification measures the degree of urban influence New Zealand’s urban areas have on surrounding rural areas. It classifies the geographic accessibility of rural statistical area 1s (SA1s) and small urban areas according to their proximity, or degree of remoteness, to larger urban areas. This classification provides increased understanding of the heterogeneity of rural areas and small urban areas and will allow more extensive analysis and reporting. Understanding the degree of urban accessibility or remoteness is important as it has a major influence on the employment sector, accessibility to services, and population composition and change.
The methodology uses drive time from an SA1 address weighted centroid to the outside boundary of the nearest major, large, and medium urban area (from Stats NZ urban rural (UR) classification) to classify rural SA1s and small urban areas to one of five categories of accessibility or remoteness. The Open Source Routing Machine service using the OpenStreetMap road network is used to calculate the drive times.

A concordance between SA1 and Urban Accessibility can be found on Aria.

Rural SA1s and small urban areas are classified to the following categories:

·High urban accessibility:
0 to15 minutes from major urban areas

·Medium urban accessibility:
15 to 25 minutes from major urban areas
0 to 25 minutes from large urban areas
0 to 15 minutes from medium urban areas

·Low urban accessibility:
25 to 60 minutes from major or large urban areas
15 to 60 minutes from medium urban areas

·Remote:
60 to 120 minutes from major, large or medium urban areas

·Very remote:
more than 120 minutes from major, large or medium urban areas

For more information refer to: Urban accessibility - methodology and classification.

The full classification is shown below:
111 Major urban area

112 Large urban area

113 Medium urban area

221 High urban accessibility

222 Medium urban accessibility

223 Low urban accessibility

224 Remote

225 Very remote

331 Inland water

332 Inlet

333 Oceanic

Note: Areas of 221 High urban accessibility and 222 Medium urban accessibility may be regarded as peri-urban in nature and combined with urban areas for analytical purposes.

The functional urban area (FUA) classification identifies small urban areas and rural areas that are integrated with larger urban areas to create FUAs.

Workplace address and usual residence address data from the 2018 Census of Population and Dwellings were used to identify satellite urban areas (1,000–4,999 residents), and rural statistical area 1s (SA1s) from which at least 40 percent of workers commuted to urban areas with more than 5,000 residents.

An FUA includes Urban rural (UR) 2018 urban areas, rural settlements and rural SA1s where there is: an urban core, one or more secondary urban cores, one or more satellite urban areas, and rural hinterland (rural settlements or rural SA1s).

The FUA indicator (IFUA) classifies UR2018 urban areas and rural SA1s according to their character within their FUA, e.g. urban core, satellite urban area.

The 53 FUAs are classified by population size. The urban core’s population rather than the entire FUA’s population is used to maintain consistency between the descriptions of UR2018 urban area and FUA type (TFUA).

FUAs that have more than 100,000 residents living in their urban core are known as metropolitan areas, while smaller FUAs are divided into large (core population 30,000–99,999), medium (core population 10,000–29,999), and small regional centres (core population 5,000–9,999).

The Greymouth urban area population is less than 10,000 but is classified as a medium regional centre, consistent with its treatment as a medium urban area in the Urban accessibility (UA) 2018 classification.

Names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons. The name field without macrons is suffixed ‘ascii’.

For more detail, and classifications, please refer to Ariā.

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

This dataset is the definitive set of meshblock boundaries concorded to higher geographies for 2021.

This version contains 53,598 meshblocks, including 16 with empty or null geometries (non-digitised meshblocks). This Meshblock Higher Geographies 2021 file is a correspondence, or concordance, which relates meshblocks to larger geographic areas or 'higher geographies'. The higher geographies contained in this concordance are: community board (CB2020), constituency (CON2020), Māori constituency (MCON2020), Māori ward (MWARD2020), regional council (REGC2020), statistical area 1 (SA12020), statistical area 2 (SA22020), territorial authority local board (TALB2020), territorial authority (TA2020), subdivision (TASUB2020), urban rural (UR2020), urban rural indicator (IUR2020), and ward (WARD2020). The following geographies were first introduced in 2018: statistical area 1 (SA1), statistical area 2 (SA2), urban rural (UR), and urban rural indicator (IUR) as part of the Statistical Standard for Geographic Areas 2018 (SSGA18) which replaced the 1992 New Zealand Standard Areas Classification (NZSAC92). For further information on individual higher geographies, refer to each geography’s metadata.

Higher geography names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons, as applicable. Column names for those without macrons are suffixed ‘ascii’.

This high definition (HD) version is the most detailed geometry, suitable for use in GIS for geometric analysis operations and for the computation of areas, centroids and other metrics. The HD version is aligned to the LINZ cadastre.

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

See the Geographic Areas File 2021 for a correspondence of meshblock to a range of geographies.

This dataset is the definitive set of annually released meshblock boundaries concorded to higher geographies for 2021. This version contains 53,598 meshblocks, including 16 with empty or null geometries (non-digitised meshblocks).

This Meshblock Higher Geographies 2021 file is a correspondence, or concordance, which relates meshblocks to larger geographic areas or 'higher geographies'. The higher geographies contained in this concordance are: community board (CB2020), constituency (CON2020), Māori constituency (MCON2020), Māoriward (MWARD2020), regional council (REGC2020), statistical area 1 (SA12020), statistical area 2 (SA22020), territorial authority local board (TALB2020), territorial authority (TA2020), subdivision (TASUB2020), urban rural (UR2020), urban rural indicator (IUR2020), and ward (WARD2020). The following geographies were first introduced in 2018: statistical area 1 (SA1), statistical area 2 (SA2), urban rural (UR), and urban rural indicator (IUR) as part of the Statistical Standard for Geographic Areas 2018 (SSGA18) which replaced the 1992 New Zealand Standard Areas Classification (NZSAC92).

Higher geography names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons, as applicable. Column names for those without macrons are suffixed ‘ascii’. For further information on individual higher geographies, refer to each geography’s metadata.

This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

See the Geographic Areas File 2021 for a correspondence of meshblock to a range of geographies.

This dataset is the definitive set of annually released meshblock boundaries for 2021 as defined by Stats NZ. This version contains 53,598 meshblocks.

Stats NZ maintains an annual meshblock geography for collecting and producing statistical data. This allows data to be compared over time. A meshblock is the smallest geographic unit for which statistical data is collected and processed by Stats NZ. A meshblock is defined by a geographic area, which can vary in size from part of a city block to a large area of rural land. Each meshblock borders on another to form a network covering all of New Zealand, including coasts and inlets and extending out to the 200-mile economic zone. Meshblocks are added together to build up larger geographic areas such as statistical area 1 (SA1), statistical area 2 (SA2), and urban rural. They are also used to define electoral districts, territorial authorities, and regional councils.

The following 16 meshblocks are outside the 12 mile limit and are not held in digitised form: 0016901, 0016902, 1588000, 3166401, 3166402, 3166600, 3166710, 3166711, 3195000, 3196001, 3196002, 3196003, 3196004, 3196005, 3196006, 3196007.

This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

The meshblock classification can also be downloaded from the Stats NZ classification and concordance tool Ariā.

This dataset contains the annually released ward boundaries for 2021 as defined by the territorial authorities and/or Local Government Commission, and maintained by Stats NZ (the custodian), clipped to the coastline. This clipped version has been created for map creation/cartographic purposes and so does not fully represent the official full extent boundaries. This version contains 239 categories.

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Wards were originally set up within any territorial authority with a population of at least 20,000. Wards are defined under the Local Electoral Act 2001 and result from dividing a territorial authority for electoral purposes. The ward system was designed to allow for the recognition of communities within a territorial authority and to increase community involvement in the local government system.Territorial authorities can now choose whether they would like to maintain electoral wards. As a result, the number of wards has steadily decreased since they were first created in 1989. Ward boundaries are reviewed in the year before the three-yearly local government elections.

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Names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons. The name field without macrons is suffixed ‘ascii’.

​

This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.

​

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

This dataset is the definitive set of annually released ward boundaries for 2021 as defined by the territorial authorities and/or Local Government Commission, and maintained by Stats NZ (the custodian). This version contains 239 categories.

Wards were originally set up within any territorial authority with a population of at least 20,000. Wards are defined under the Local Electoral Act 2001 and result from dividing a territorial authority for electoral purposes. The ward system was designed to allow for the recognition of communities within a territorial authority and to increase community involvement in the local government system.Territorial authorities can now choose whether they would like to maintain electoral wards. As a result, the number of wards has steadily decreased since they were first created in 1989. Ward boundaries are reviewed in the year before the three-yearly local government elections.

​

Names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons. The name field without macrons is suffixed ‘ascii’.

​

This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.

​

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

This dataset contains the annually released statistical area 2 (SA2) boundaries for 2021 as defined by Stats NZ, clipped to the coastline. This clipped version has been created for map creation/cartographic purposes and so does not fully represent the official full extent boundaries. This version contains 2,176 SA2 categories.

SA2s were introduced as part of the Statistical Standard for Geographic Areas 2018 (SSGA2018) which replaced he New Zealand Standard Areas Classification (NZSAC1992). The SA2 geography replaces the (NZSAC1992) area unit geography.

SA2 is an output geography that provides higher aggregations of population data than can be provided at the statistical area 1 (SA1) level. The SA2 geography aims to reflect communities that interact together socially and economically. In populated areas, SA2s generally contain similar sized populations.

SA2s are built from SA1s and either define or aggregate to define urban rural areas, territorial authorities, and regional councils. SA2s in city council areas generally have a population of 2,000–4,000 residents while SA2s in district council areas generally have a population of 1,000–3,000 residents. In rural areas, many SA2s have fewer than 1,000 residents because they are in conservation areas or contain sparse populations that cover a large area.

Names are provided with and without tohutō/macrons. The name field without macrons is suffixed ‘ascii’.

This generalised version has been simplified for rapid drawing and is designed for thematic or web mapping purposes.

Digital boundary data became freely available on 1 July 2007.

This dataset contains the true centroid point layer for the annually released statistical area 2 (SA2) boundaries as at 1 January 2021. The "true" centroid is the centre of mass of that polygon, such that if some flat substance of uniform thickness and density were cut into the shape of that polygon, then that object would balance at the centroid. The centroid is a useful way of summarizing the location of a set of polygons as points, particularly when used for comparative analysis. Note that the centroid could potentially fall outside the SA2 polygon, depending on the shape of the polygon. The dataset contains the EASTING and NORTHING attributes of the centroid point in NZGD2000 New Zealand Transverse Mercator (EPSG:2193) and LATITUDE and LONGITUDE of the centroid point in decimal degrees in WGS1984 (EPSG:4326) projection.