Municipal Level Maps

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Is there anywhere that I can get statewide maps with municipal borders (cities, townships, etc.)?  I'd like to use them for new maps that aren't available on the main site.

[Adam Griffin]

You can open a state in DRA, set the map style to "blank", maximize opacity and enable "city/town lines" to create something like this that can be colored by hand.



The obvious downside is the quality of the pixels in between boundaries and blank space. You can take maps like these into a program like Photoshop or GIMP, remove all non-white colors with the exception of black (has to be perfectly white; the white inside the precincts above is an off-white) and then convert the image to a pure black/white graphic. This will thicken the boundary lines but you won't have white space that refuses to color from one single click. If there is any color remaining on the map that is not perfectly black or white, it will be converted to black in this process and depending on the program, may not be undoed. The issue with this, however, is that it is hard to make one of these that will be legible with the city/town lines included; once you convert the color, all lines will be black - city and precinct.

An option would be perhaps to follow the steps I mentioned above without the city limit lines enabled, creating a base template that's solely black/white. Then take the exact same map with city limit lines into a photo editing program, remove the off-white precinct coloration, and paste it with transparent background over the first map/line it up. Since the base map's lines will be thicker (in my experience) after converting it to black/white, the version with the city lines should relatively neatly fit into place.

[Adam Griffin]

OK, so a few minutes later...

I followed what I described above until I got to making the second map. I found out that it's a bit more difficult to do a complete overlay with town lines w/o having the end result be like the one that wasn't converted to black and white. So what I did instead was used the color selection tool to select a particular color (in this case, the pink color of the town lines), copied that and pasted it onto my base map.

This was the result. The coloration isn't accurate, obviously: just showing off how there are no white pixels (other than in the areas where the fill tool can't reach with one click; can easily be colored in). You can also change the city line color when it's selected to something more legible: hot pink doesn't show up well on a red/blue color scheme (or really show up at all; I recommend changing the city line color after the map is complete, because what colors are visible beforehand won't be afterward, and vice-versa).

There are probably better ways to do this available, but whenever I can't find maps...this is my general process. I had never tried doing them with municipal boundaries before, though.

[Adam Griffin]

And if you're just interested in municipal boundaries without precinct lines, then that makes the process a lot whole easier. Load into Photoshop/GIMP, remove all non-white areas, and then convert the image to black & white.

[Torie]

Some of those lines in some states are village lines, rather than city lines, and often precinct lines overlap village lines. Villages typically have quite limited government powers. Sometimes you can tell which are city lines, and which village lines, because the DRA utility will typically have a different number sequence between different cities, and different towns, identifying the respective precincts, but not for different villages. And then to make matters more complicated, often there are no lines between towns, or townships, and so one must look at the precinct number sequences, to find where the lines are. In Illinois, the town names are actually identified for each precinct, but in other states not. There is quite a learning curve here actually.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

You can download county subdivision shapefiles for all states from the US Census.

Here is the portal for accessing the files. Here is the page for downloading county subdivision shapefiles. They are listed by FIPS code, which you can look up here (e.g. Michigan is listed as tl_2014_26_cousub). If you have municipality-level results, these are probably the geographic units that those results apply to, or at least that's the case in any state that I've considered.

Here is a PNG that I just exported from Michigan's county subdivisions shapefile. Ideally, you'd want to work with a SVG, but this is probably good enough for some purposes:

Thanks.    Can you convert shapefile to SVG or PNG, and if so, how?

[cinyc]

Thanks.   Can you convert shapefile to SVG or PNG, and if so, how?

Why would you want to? It is much easier to auto-color a shapefile than to individually color in shapes by hand, if you know what you're doing. But if you really wanted to convert a shapefile to png, I suppose you could always use a screen printing tool to save what is on the screen as a png file.  I'd have to check MapWindows GIS to see if there is a direct shapefile to png converter built in.  I'm sure there are some stand alone programs that do it, too.  Just Google "shp to png".

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Thanks.    Can you convert shapefile to SVG or PNG, and if so, how?

Why would you want to? It is much easier to auto-color a shapefile than to individually color in shapes by hand, if you know what you're doing. But if you really wanted to convert a shapefile to png, I suppose you could always use a screen printing tool to save what is on the screen as a png file.  I'd have to check MapWindows GIS to see if there is a direct shapefile to png converter built in.  I'm sure there are some stand alone programs that do it, too.  Just Google "shp to png".

I know next to nothing about GIS.  I've thought about taking classes, though.

I guess the question I'm really trying to ask is how you were able to convert that map to PNG.

[cinyc]

I know next to nothing about GIS.  I've thought about taking classes, though.

I guess the question I'm really trying to ask is how you were able to convert that map to PNG.

It's not that difficult to learn how to use the free MapWindowGIS to make maps.  I don't think it requires classes.  I can give a detailed tutorial, if you wish.

You can convert a shapefile into an image file using MapWindow GIS by adding the .shp file as a layer, then selecting Edit from the top menu and Export>Map from the drop-down menu.  My older version won't save as a .png, but will save as a .jpeg or .bmp file.  Or you can download the free QGIS, open the .shp file as a vector layer, then select Project from the top menu and Save as Image from the drop-down menu.  In both instances, you might have to change the shape color to white by right-clicking on the layer name, and changing the color options in the drop-down menus.

I'm sure there are other ways to convert a .shp file into a .png file - as I said before, just Google "shp to png".