Cities in a drawn area

Worked example: the Salt Lake Valley

The default shape traces the Salt Lake Valley floor in six corners, about 329 square miles. Eighteen incorporated places of 1,000+ have their internal point inside it. The five largest are:

• Salt Lake City, UT: 217,783 people
• West Valley City, UT: 138,144 people
• West Jordan, UT: 116,688 people
• Sandy, UT: 92,840 people
• South Jordan, UT: 86,156 people

The list continues through Millcreek, Herriman, Taylorsville, Murray, Draper, and Riverton down to White City at 5,918. Together the 18 places hold 1,174,176 people. Magna, with 31,381 residents, is in the same valley but missing: its internal point is a few miles west of the shape's northwest edge. Add a corner a little west of Magna and it joins the list.

How to use it

1. The map opens on a sample shape around the Salt Lake Valley. Press Clear to start your own, then pan and zoom to your area.
2. Click the map to add corners in order around the edge, or type a place or coordinates in Add a corner. After the third corner the shape closes and fills.
3. Press Undo to remove the last corner. The count next to the buttons shows how many corners the shape has.
4. Read the card: how many places of 1,000+ are inside, the largest one, their combined population, and the drawn area. Orange dots mark each place.
5. The table below lists the places largest first. Download CSV saves them with state, 2024 population, and coordinates. Copy the page address to share the shape.

What counts as a city here

The list comes from the Census Bureau's subcounty population estimates, which cover incorporated places: cities, towns, villages, and boroughs with their own local government. This site keeps the ones with 1,000 or more residents. Census-designated places, the unincorporated communities the Census names for statistics, are not in that release and do not appear.

That matters in states with many unincorporated suburbs. Hawaii has only one entry, Urban Honolulu, and large parts of Maryland, Virginia, and Florida live outside city limits. In those areas the list is shorter than a map of town names would suggest. The population in a drawn area tool adds a county total that covers everyone.

One point per place

Each place is tested by its Census internal point, a location inside its boundary that is usually near the middle. A city whose land crosses your edge is either fully in or fully out, depending on which side that point falls. Big, oddly shaped cities near an edge are the usual surprises, so zoom in and adjust a corner when a result looks wrong.

Populations are the July 1, 2024 estimates. They describe the whole place, not only the part inside your shape.

Drawing a useful shape

Click corners in order around the area. The shape closes itself after the third corner, and each new corner is joined to the first one. Use the search box to drop a corner on a named place or exact coordinates. Undo removes the last corner. If two edges cross, the tool shows a notice and holds back the list until you move a corner, so go around the edge in one direction. A shape can have up to 200 corners. The corners live in the page address, so the link reopens the same shape.