The 2011 digital boundaries covering New Zealand, including the Chatham Islands, are now available to download from the Statistics NZ website.

Compressed in zip format, the files contain the following geographic layers: meshblock (MB), area unit (AU), urban area (UA), territorial authorities (TA), regional council (RC), wards, and community boards (CB).

A key reason for the inclusion of wards and community boards is to reflect areas of jurisdication in the Auckland Council.

For Auckland, the ward boundaries contain the local wards, and the community board boundaries contain the local boards.

Please note:

• Annual pattern are the level 1 boundaries - the most accurate
• Census Based are the level 2 boundaries - generalised to a 1.3 metre tunnel width using the douglas algorithm

Sarah Cowell

GeoStatistical Analyst
Statistics New Zealand