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Digital boundary files

Instructions for downloading files
Metadata

Annual pattern files

Census-based files

Use this page to download files showing 2013 digital boundaries for New Zealand, including the Chatham Islands. The files are compressed in zip format and contain the following geographic layers: meshblock (MB), area unit (AU), urban area (UA), territorial authorities (TA), regional council (RC), wards, and community boards (CB).

You can also download the General (GED07) and Māori (MED07) electoral districts (used for the 2011 election), see ESRI shapefiles under Annual pattern files.

The annual pattern starts from 2007 and covers only New Zealand. Also available are Census-based digital boundaries for 2001 which cover only New Zealand. The 2006 Census boundaries cover New Zealand and are broken down into regions.

These files can be used in conjunction with the annual Geographic area files.

See Conditions of supply for terms of use.

Note: Annual pattern digital boundaries are the most accurate. They contain all of the points digitised along the boundaries and are available annually. Census-based digital boundaries are generalised to a 1.3 metre tunnel width using the Douglas algorithm and are only available every five years.

From 2010, digital boundaries are only available in NZTM (NZGD2000), which is now the official national geodetic datum for New Zealand. Previous years are still available in NZMG. See New Zealand Transverse Mercator 2000 projection on the LINZ website for more information. From 2013, all files are released in Map Info, ESRI Shapefile, and ESRI Geodatabase format. All files contain four elements:

Clipped to the coastline, high-definition boundaries
Clipped to the Coastline, generalised to 1 metre tolerance boundaries
Full past the 12-mile limit, high-definition boundaries
Full, past the 12-mile limit, generalised to 1 metre tolerance boundaries.

Instructions for downloading files

Download the metadata files.
Download the digital boudary files.

To view digital boundaries, you need a geographic information system (GIS) installed. If you do not have a GIS, you can download software that can read these files.

Statistics New Zealand does not provide support for any of these free viewers:

MapInfo ProViewer available from MapInfo (.tab)
Supported platforms: Windows
http://gw.vtrenz.net/?S09SPVMG9I

ArcExplorer available from ESRI (.shp)
Supported platforms: Windows, Unix, Linux
http://www.esri.com/software/arcexplorer/download.html

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Metadata

ANZLIC 2013 Digital Boundaries Metadata (WinZip PDF, 949KB)
ANZLIC 2012 Digital Boundaries Metadata (WinZip PDF, 701KB)
ANZLIC 2011 Digital Boundaries Metadata (WinZip PDF, 1.2MB)

These downloadable pdf zip files are in Adobe Acrobat format. If you do not have the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you may download the reader to view or print the contents of this file.

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Annual pattern files

Attention: The area unit with a code of ‘523818’ and a descriptor ‘Reboubt East’ was found to be incorrect and should have had the descriptor ‘Redoubt East’. This has been corrected for the ESRI digital boundaries but has not been corrected in the MapInfo formats below. Users of the MapInfo files will need to correct the files. Statistics NZ apologies for this inconvenience.