Designated place

A designated place (DPL) is a type of community or settlement identified by Statistics Canada that does not meet the criteria used to define municipalities or population centres. DPLs are delineated every 5 years for the Canadian census as the statistical counterparts of incorporated places such as cities, towns, and villages.^[1]

Though lacking separate municipal government, DPLs otherwise physically resemble incorporated places. They are created by provincial or territorial governments for the purpose of providing data for settled concentrated populations that are identifiable by name but are not legally incorporated under the laws of the province/territory in which they are located.^[1] The boundaries of a DPL therefore have no legal status, and not all unincorporated communities are necessarily granted DPL status.

Some designated places may have a quasi-governmental status, such as a local services board in Ontario or an organized hamlet in Saskatchewan. Others may be formerly unincorporated settlements or formerly independent municipalities that have been merged into larger governments, and have retained DPL status in order to ensure statistical continuity with past censuses.

DPLs are similar to the function of census-designated places in the United States, but are defined differently. One significant difference is that Statistics Canada applies the designation to much smaller communities than does the United States Census Bureau.

Statistics Canada indexes designated places numerically, with each designated place referred to by a unique six-digit code, the first two digits of which are the Standard Geographical Classification code for the province or territory in which the place is located, an example being 590066 for Shawnigan Lake in British Columbia.^[2]