A place typically has a residential nucleus and a closely spaced street pattern, and it frequently includes commercial property and other urban land uses.
A small settlement in the open countryside or the densely settled fringe of a large city may not be a place as defined by the Census Bureau.
[1] An incorporated place, under the Census Bureau's definition,[2] is a type of governmental unit incorporated under state law as a city, town (except in the New England states, New York, and Wisconsin),[3] borough (except in Alaska and New York),[4] or village, and having legally prescribed limits, powers, and functions.
Puerto Rico and several of the outlying areas under United States jurisdiction (such as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) also have no incorporated places.
In the six New England states, and in New York and Wisconsin, the term "town" refers to what the Census Bureau classifies as a minor civil division (MCD) rather than a place.
The CDP permits the tabulation of population counts for many localities that otherwise would have no identity within the Census Bureau's framework of geographic areas.
By defining an area as a CDP, that locality then appears in the same category of census data as incorporated places.